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Books, Movies, TV, etc — 195 Comments

You absolutely HAVE to see The Last Sin Eater. The book was written by Francine Rivers and the movie was produced by Michael Landon JUNIOR. It has suspense, a murder, covers old traditions and is a haunting story about a little girl in Appalachia. PLEASE see it, and I know you will like it, and then can tell about it on the blog so others can see it as well. It is beautifully produced and acted. My new favorite, now TO Kill A Mockingbird is number TWO.

Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” is a rather fascinating series of urban fantasy novels. While they’re definitely not “Christian fiction”, they provide a gripping portrayal of a man trying to do right in a world filled with darkness, including in part his relationship with God (still not really resolved). It also contains one of the finest portrayals of a true Christian that I’ve read in fiction, in the form of Michael Carpenter, a knight wielding a sword containing one of the nails from the One True Cross. Content-wise it certainly doesn’t fit into the bubble of Christian fiction, though it’s not exactly gratuitous either, especially in consideration of its genre. Overall, some of the best I’ve read, with a whole lot of books written and a whole lot left to come as well.

In light of all the horrible things that need discussion, I do feel some guilt for asking, but here goes……Is is possible to occasionally post on Falling Skies when it starts again? I don’t know anyone IRL that likes it as much as I do, and not just because Noah Wyle is totes adorbs…..

I highly recommend the movie: “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry.” While it won’t go down in history as a classic and may seem a little slow moving at first, it is well worth watching to the end. I can’t imagine anyone not being touched by this movie.

@ ForgivenMuch:
I completely agree with you except on one small thing – I think it will become a classic film within the Christian movie genre. We took our kids to see it at the theater when it came out – really believe the Holy Spirit opened the doors to get this film into secular theaters, no one left with dry eyes. Such a moving story on the power of love and forgiveness!

Movie and book, Hell and Mr. Fudge. the book is ‘Hell a final word’ by Edward Fudge. Basically his life story and how he came to the conclusion that eternal torment is not a scriptural concept, rather total destruction/death. Also ‘Hypergrace’ by Michael Brown phd.

I have been reading and reviewing the book, Jesus Calling by sarah young. It concerns me that she uses Jesus speaking to her in the first person???!!!! Only the apostles, Moses, David, etc. were given words inspired by God, am I correct? Does it mean anybody who chooses her approach can dictate words directly from the mouth of Jesus? Appreciate your thoughts.

It concerns me that she uses Jesus speaking to her in the first person???!!!!

Hi Margaret! If I may chime in…

At the very least, if someone makes a claim to have heard from Jesus directly, you have a case of extra-Biblical revelation. That is to say you have an example of the Eternal Word speaking outside of the revealed Word of God (a.k.a. the Bible) to a single human. One has to ask, for what reason did this event occur?

Problem: It is completely unverifiable. If you question it, you can be accused of everything from doubting God to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The fear of questioning (for the one who makes the claim) offers a type of protection if you think about it.

A lot of authors, preachers, and pastors use the phrase “The Lord told me…” or something like that. So one needs to do a little digging to find out exactly what that means. Did they hear an audible voice? Did the actually see Jesus with their physical eyes and He spoke to them? How did this happen? Were there witnesses?

It all comes down to the question of revelation outside of the pages of Scripture, and if you believe that revelation takes place today.

Personally, I am very leery of anyone who makes the claim that God spoke to them. I do not accept the concept of extra-Biblical revelation primarily because of what the writer of Hebrews opens with regarding Jesus, the Book of Revelation, and the fact that Christians are just not very good at listening to what God has already said. Do we really need more revelation anyway when we don’t pay attention to God in the first place? I wonder. However, like all questions of this type, and our faulty conclusions, your mileage may vary…

So here is your chance to do some investigation, ask questions, and come to your own conclusion. I would be interested to hear what you come up with.

I went and saw Ridley Scott’s new movie Exodus: gods and kings. Some blogs are abuzz over it. I’ve read everything from how it’s insensitive to the plight of African Americans, to an almost absolute certainty that the Exodus is pure myth and never happened. Big eye-roll to them all. Does everything on the silver screen always have to have an ideological screed stretched over it nowadays? I for one was thoroughly entertained by the skill and artistry of one of better film makers (Scott) in the business.

Ok, hello! Thanks for directing us to this thread. I am a sucker for book reccomendations.

Right now I am reading x”Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us” by Robert D. Hare, PhD.

I find it fascinating in light of all the stuff that’s going on in the leadership of evangelical Christianity these days. Maybe some of these leaders aren’t true psychopaths, but I believe they would score high on the Psychopathy Test.

This book is as good as “The Sociopath Next door” By _____ Stout but is actually more in-depth IMO.

I’ll have to have a look see. I just finished Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes Greene teaches at Harvard and the main thesis of his book is that humans have a common moral currency regardless of race, culture, or religion.

I will check it out. My wife rolls her eyes, but I am fascinated by mental aberrations in certain people as well as biographies/autobiographies.

I’m also looking for something I can read to my 8 yo daughter as well. She loves mysteries and fantasy but I suspect that Harry Potter is a little too teenage/adult for her. I just started “Portal through the Pond” by David K Anderson and she seems to like it. It is the first in a series of four (so far). I’d like any suggestions.

For the most part yes I do agree with Greene and here’s why:
He attempts to strike a careful balance between emotion and reason; black and white absolutism based on tribal mores vs. a reasonable pragmatism based on, but not solely upon the utilitarian model. More than anything else (in my opinion) Greene’s treatise is a good guidebook for conflict resolution based on the the tried and true principles of consensus and compromise. Not for Crusaders and Jihadists, but for the rest of us I think Greene makes sense.

@ Muff Potter:
I read this a few weeks ago, and agree completely! Truly a superb book.

Right now, I’m reading Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, by Gerard Russell. Highly recommended to folks here, especially because his focus is on the vanishing minority religions (and people who practice them) in the Middle East (Arab countries, Iran, even Pakistan and Afghanistan). Though I do wish he had said more on the Copts.

You might like the film Woman in Gold, I know I sure did! Helen Mirren plays a Jewess who escaped Vienna and the Nazis as a young woman while the gittin’ was good. Needless to say her family left behind didn’t fare so well and all their art and jewelry was stolen by the Nazis, very common for those horrific times. Anyway she and a young attorney sue the Austrian government to get her family treasures back. Charles Dance has a minor role in the film, as distinguished and stately as always. I looooooove Helen Mirren, always have. It’s a good movie, so much more engaging than a lot of the trash out there.

I’m hoping that Herbert & Anderson will continue on with their Dune novellas. What I’d really like to see is a fuller expansion of how the Guild came to be, starting with Norma Cenva. She and the Guild are touched on only teasingly in their previous works.

A great documentary on HBO about the obesity epidemic in adults and children in the U.S., excellent medical and scientific research, stories of people who have serious health problems from same, and inspirational stories of those who kicked it into gear and made serious changes and have improved health!

I’m hoping that Herbert & Anderson will continue on with their Dune novellas. What I’d really like to see is a fuller expansion of how the Guild came to be, starting with Norma Cenva. She and the Guild are touched on only teasingly in their previous works.

My understanding is that a focus on the Guild will be the final book in the prequel trilogy of the “Great Schools of Dune.” Publication date looks to be May 2016-ish, with probable title of Navigators of Dune.

Max’s insightful comment yesterday on 8/15/15 about New Calvinism on a blog post here on TWW:

Education does not produce one ounce of revelation. Flesh controls New Calvinism, not the Spirit. Just a bunch of flesh babies rebelling against the way their parents do church. Intellectual, but not very smart. They pride themselves on being reformed, but have not been transformed by the love of Christ.

Thanx brad !
I look forward to when Navigators will be available in hardcover.
I have always been fascinated by Norma Cenva and her story. How Tio Holtzman stole her Mathematics, made it his own, and used it for his own aggrandizement.
Cenva is one of my fictional heroines.

Commenter/poster/author/researcher Barb Orlowski, Canada, (blog is Church Exiters) posted these books on 8/25/15 on another Wartburg Watch article regarding the whole comp discussion as recommended reading.
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I would like to recommend three books by Susanna Krizo which attempt to expose the Complementarian agenda.

*“Recovering From Un-Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Patriarchy”

“Recovering From Un-Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Patriarchy” examines the main arguments in an easy-to-read dialogue format that allows the reader to reach his/her own conclusions while enjoying a deep, yet lighthearted, theological discussion.

Here is an excerpt from one book review:

“Thank God for Susanna Krizo! She makes complicated theology easy and fun to read. This is one of the most entertaining books we’ve ever read. At times it is so funny that you find yourself laughing and having a good time, and totally forget that theology is usually a dull topic to read! What we love most about her writing is that she works so hard to develop a full logical argument, address both sides of an issue, and really thinks things through to reasonable conclusions, all the while staying faithful to the Bible. Many theologians don’t like answering questions because they don’t really want to think things through because then their conclusions fall apart. But the Bible says “come let us reason together” because we need to really test all doctrine before accepting it. That’s what this book does so well.”

*“When Dogmas Die: The Return of Biblical Equality”

“When Dogmas Die” begins with a comprehensive look at Genesis 3:16 and the view that women are born inferior.

Book Quote: “Always ask why—not who, but why—for if you ask who gave the man authority over the woman, you may not find out why the man was given the authority, but if you ask why the man was given authority over the woman, you will find that it was the man’s idea.

Book Review Excerpt:

“When Dogmas Die” is a stunning critique of one of the great handbooks of Patriarchy in the Church: “Restoring Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,” the collection of essays on gender roles compiled by John Piper and Wayne Grudem.

Grudem is considered a scholar by many in the church, so it comes as quite a surprise to find his work so tainted with errors and omissions, as this book aptly demonstrates and documents.

The subjection of women by men began as a result of the fall in the garden, and Krizo begins the book with a Chapter entitled “Genesis 3:16” to prove that point, and to show why Piper and Grudem’s attempt to teach a God-ordained hierarchy prior to the fall is in error.
*“Genesis 3: The Origin of Gender Roles”

Book Review Excerpts:

“Witty and insightful, Susanna Krizo’s new book joins an ever-growing body of literature calling for the full recognition of women’s equality in all corners of the Christian faith. Challenging patriarchal assumptions carried over from ancient cultures, Krizo paints a picture of women and men sharing authority and celebrating what it means to be created in the image of God.”

“If the creation account doesn’t mention the man’s authority, and if Ephesians 5 instructs husbands to love their wives the way they love themselves instead of exercising authority over them, why do our theologians nevertheless insist that Ephesians 5 confirms that the man was given authority over the woman as part of creation” (from Chapter 7)

“The answer is simple: because men desire to rule women as a consequence of sin and no longer love their wives the way humans were created to love — unselfishly.” (from Chapter 7)

For folks desiring to get your heads around TWW comments pertaining to the ails of reformed theology (Calvinism), I recommend a couple of books pertaining to the essential tenets of Calvinism and its 21st century progeny, “New” Calvinism, that is causing so much trouble in Christian ranks. Both are scholarly works, but written in a way that you can grasp the problem and begin to see it being manifested where you live … no doubt about it, New Calvinism is coming to a church near you!

One of the first articles that caught my attention about “New Calvinism” continues to be a good read on the subject, even if it is becoming dated a bit on the who’s-who of the current movement (TWW is doing a fine job flagging some of the new folks on the scene and problems associated with their ministries). You can find the article at:

@ Velour:
Looks like Christianity Today put the article I cited into limited view, by subscription only. Must have received too many hits! Too bad, that was a good intro to New Calvinism, as it emerged onto the scene about 10 years ago.

@ Velour:
Looks like Christianity Today put the article I cited into limited view, by subscription only. Must have received too many hits! Too bad, that was a good intro to New Calvinism, as it emerged onto the scene about 10 years ago.

@ Velour:
Looks like Christianity Today put the article I cited into limited view, by subscription only. Must have received too many hits! Too bad, that was a good intro to New Calvinism, as it emerged onto the scene about 10 years ago.

Thanks, Max. I have access to a database that gives me access to all kinds of magazines, academic journals, etc. I will try to read the full article through that.

I highly recommend “Blight In the Vineyard: Exposing the Roots, Myths, and Emotional Torment of Spiritual Tyranny” by John Immel.

The book was specifically written in response to Immel’s experience in Sovereign Grace churches, specifically Covenant Life Church, but it has broad application to all churches run by a heavy-handed authoritarian pastor. My former 9Marx/Mark Dever type church in Dubai (United Christian Church of Dubai) is in this category.

“Here’s the catch. Southern Baptist leaders have made the tragic error of believing that a husband should rule and a wife should be submissive because the Bible demands it. Truth be known, the Bible calls any desire to control and dominate–be it the husband or the wife– “the curse.” The divorce rate increases when Southern Baptists call “the norm” what the Bible calls “the curse.” When the first man (Adam) sought to rule over the first woman (Eve), Adam was manifesting a curse, not meeting a commandment (Genesis 3:16).

Jesus came to reverse the curse. Redemption causes curse-filled people to become grace-filled people. Those who seek to rule over others by exerting authority, when they come to see what Jesus says about life, will turn loose of trying to control other people and will only seek to love and serve, NEVER exerting any alleged authority. Again, Jesus said that “the Gentiles lord over others” and “exert authority,” but “it shall not be this way among you” (Matthew 20:24-26).

Southern Baptist Convention leaders have wrongly pushed for men to lord their authority over their wives, and called on wives to submit to the authority of their husbands because of a belief in and promotion of “the eternal subordination of the Son.” I’ve written about this doctrinal problem among Southern Baptists for years, but I recently came across a brilliant article by Dr. Keith Johnson (Ph.D. Duke), the director of theological development for Campus Crusade for Christ. Johnson’s article is called Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of the Son: An Augustinian Perspective.”

Jimmy Hinton turned in his pastor/father for sexually abusing children at the church they have both pastored. The father is now serving a life sentence in prison.

The Hinton family has bravely tackled the topic of child sexual abuse and not lied or covered up for a pedophile in their own family. Instead the Hintons have ministered to victims of sexual abuse in their church community and at other churches.

Refugee’s helpful instructions for those who would like to bold and italicize on The Wartburg Watch.

refugee UNITED STATES on Wed Sep 16, 2015 at 04:55 PM said:

Janet Varin wrote:

(I capitalized the last paragraph because I don’t know how to modify the font on these comments.)

Janet, just fyi

When you highlight some text and quote it, look at how it appears in the comment box before you post. See the [blockquote] and [/blockquote] bracketing the text? The principle is the same for bold and italicized text.

You italicize by typing a less-than-sign, followed by the letters em, followed by a greater-than sign.

Then type the text. Then close the special font (see next line).

To close, you type a less-than-sign, a slash that goes from lower left to upper right, then the letters em, then the greater-than-sign.

It would look something like this (if it works in this medium)
I am going to quote with [em]italicized text[/em] and everything else will be normal text.

To bold, you simply put the word strong in place of (in the italics instructions) the letters em.
I am going to emphasize with [strong]bold text[/strong] and everything else will be as usual.

Just replace the square brackets with angle brackets (less-than and greater-than symbols). And don’t forget to close the special text, or *everything* that follows will be bolded and/or italicized. It can be tricky.

Any Blacklist fans here? I gave up the glass teat (TV) some years back because the quality got as bad as an African waterhole with nothing but crocs in it.
Finally! Somebody hired some writers who can actually write for more than just a bevy of pretty people with perfect teeth and little more.
James Spader is awesome as Raymond Reddington.
I never miss an episode.

“I experienced what you are experiencing when I first looked into the theory of divine determinism. Jerry Walls’ lecture at Evangel University “What’s Wrong With Calvinism?” was of great help in dealing with it. It is on Youtube. Roger Olson has some excellent material on the topic on his blog and the website of the Society of Evangelical Arminians is exceptionally helpful.” – John D on 5/14/15 on TWW

Leonard Verduin’s “The Reformers and Their Stepchildren” is a scholarly work that sheds light on the shenanigans of Calvin and his followers and also reveals who the true reformers were … the Anabaptists (the stepchildren).

This particulate theory of atonement was invented during the reformation. If true, it means that the church got it wrong for 1500 years. Some go so far as to say one cannot be a Christian without believing this theory, which means there were no true Christians until about 500 years ago.

So let’s take a look at the theory. First the definition:
Penal substitutionary atonement refers to the doctrine that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners. God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and he, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve. This was a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.
– http://www.theopedia.com/penal-substitutionary-atonement

Now let’s ask where to find all of this from the Bible. I developed this list of questions about six months ago. I based it mostly on the above definition, but just about any definition will due. So far I have yet to get any convincing arguments that Penal Substitution is true based on answers to these questions.

1. Where does the Bible explicitly state that on the cross Jesus bore the punishment that we deserved?
2. Where does the Bible explicitly state that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins? To whom was the penalty paid?
3. Where does the Bible explicitly state that Jesus satisfied the wrath of God?
4. Where does the Bible explicitly state that God’s wrath can and must be satisfied?
5. Where does the Bible explicitly state that God cannot forgive without first being appeased?
6. Where does the Bible explicitly state that God cannot simply forgive without compromising His own holy standard?
7. How is it justice to punish the innocent in place of the guilty? (see Deuteronomy 24:16 – Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin)
8. How can an infinite being, who needs or lacks nothing, be unsatisfied based on human sin and then consequently satisfied by sacrifice? If God’s wrath can be satisfied, how does it not imply that God lacked something prior to being satisfied? What did the satisfaction change about God (e.g., His mood?, His attitude?, His disposition?)?
9. Was God’s wrath fully satisfied or partially satisfied? Where does the Bible state this?
10. If fully satisfied, why does the Bible describe it as something that remains for unbelievers? (see John 3:36 – He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.)
11. If fully satisfied, why does the Bible describe it as something that will still be poured out in the last days? (see Rev 16:1 – Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”)
12. How does full satisfaction not logically lead to universalism, since there is no wrath left for anyone to endure if it was fully satisfied?
13. If not fully satisfied, what distinguishes the wrath that was satisfied from the wrath that was not satisfied? Where does the Bible most clearly state this?
14. If not fully satisfied, what was “finished” on the cross? (see John 19:30 – Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.)
15. Since we have been crucified with Christ, did we also participate in satisfying God’s wrath by being punished with Him? Why or why not? If we were not punished with Him, in what essential way were we united with Christ in the likeness of His death? (see Romans 6:5 – For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death; see also Romans 6:6 – knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him; and see Galatians 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ)
16. Was our debt fully paid by Jesus or fully forgiven by God? If fully forgiven, what was left to be paid and what was accomplished on the cross? If fully paid, what was left to be forgiven? Or was it partially paid and partially forgiven. How is it just to forgive a debt by requiring payment? Doesn’t forgiveness negate the requirement for payment?
17. If the penalty for our sins is eternal separation from the Lord (see 2 Thessalonians 1:9 – These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power), how could Jesus pay that penalty? How would it not require Him to be eternally separated from Himself? Where does the Bible say that Jesus paid an eternal debt or suffered eternal destruction or suffered eternal separation from Himself or the Father?
18. What does it mean for God to command us to forgive others in the same way that He forgave us? (see Ephesians 4:32 – Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.) Does God needing to vent His wrath as payment before He can forgive us mean that we must also vent our wrath as payment in order to forgive others? Does God hold us to a higher standard than He holds himself? Why or why not?

After doing some background research, the book I picked as probably the best one for overall history and analysis is *The Shepherding Movement: Controversy and Charismatic Ecclesiology* by S. David Moore.http://www.amazon.com/Shepherding-Movement-Pentecostal-Theology-Supplement/dp/0826471609/
It would be really helpful to have a summary of key activities and indicators that demonstrate the presence of an underlying pro-Shepherding/authoritarian discipleship paradigm, and what contemporary groups function from that paradigm, and the history of the who and how that system got into those groups. I don’t yet know of any books that cover those details. Maybe a group can take that on sometime …

I thought about some key indicators, and remembered that a lot of them are in the lists for this post I wrote on “Calvinistas” a few years ago. Although Shepherding-type authoritarianism isn’t only in Neo-Calvinist/Neo-Puritan or Pentecostal settings, there is a common paradigm of thinking that always separates things into classes and categories, and that similarity goes far deeper than the doctrinal differences.https://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/calvinistas/
FWIW, here’s a bullet list of some of the items on those lists, and I’ll leave the descriptions of them over there.
* Dualism
* Reductionism
* Perfectionism
* Patriarchalism
* Totalism and Authoritarianism
* Dominionism
About the only other thing I think I’d add to this is something having to do with the ways these groups tend to “collaborate.” If they engage in ministry partnerships at all, it’s like to be where there is high overlap on those other essential approaches to thinking processes, systems, personal growth or behavior modification, authority and subservience, and stance toward culture. And the rest of the churches-theologians-Christians are labeled as either non-gospel, heretical, etc.

Has anyone here read Jerome D. Frank’s book Persuasion and Healing?
(He was a professor of Psychiatry at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.)
It was recommended to me post-bad church experience/heavy Shepherding. (I bought a used copy online.)
I’m reading the chapter on Thought Reform right now, and it’s what we’ve also been discussing
about these cultic practices that the NeoCalvinists have embraced. I’m looking forward to reading the chapter on Non-Medical Healing, which from what I’ve skimmed reminds me of Nouthetic Counseling (“Bible is sufficient counsel for everything”, aka malpractice, the unauthorized practice of medicine by untrained pastors/elders).

Gram3’s post on 5/24/16 about the roots of Patriarchy that we are seeing in Christian churches, NeoCalvinism:

I would add to BradFuturist that Rousas Rushdoony was the fount of Reconstructionism (the Reformed version of Dominionism) which led to Federal Vision which plagues many PCA churches to this day. Federal Vision is Doug Wilson’s theology, though it is taught by Peter Leithart who is still inexplicably tolerated by the PCA.
Dominionism was also promoted heavily in charismatic circles via TBN and other outlets. The connection between the charismatic form of Dominionism and the Reconstructionist version was Gary North who is Rushdoony’s son-in-law.
Reconstructionism is a perversion of standard Covenant Theology. Some consider it merely an extreme form of Covenant Theology, but I disagree. As Brad said, they wish to establish a theocratic state modeled on the OT theocracy. They take that as a pattern for how we should do government and church and family. This includes the idea of Patriarchy.
Federal Vision shifted the focus from establishing a theocracy to establishing a church that is the center of everything. There is much talk of priests, fathers as priests of their family, etc. Rather than a focus on individual conversion, the FV focuses on baptism and communion. One becomes a Christian by being baptized and one is baptized because one is born into a family headed by a Christian man.
The word “covenant” is plastered all over a lot of different things, and I think it is important to keep those things separate lest we blame people who hold to standard Covenant Theology for the weirdness.
I think a lot of Reconstructionist baggage got ported over to the YRR by guys reading Greg Bahnsen who was an affiliate of Rushdoony. He was a brilliant guy who was highly respected as an apologist in the Van Til school as was Rushdoony.
Gothard is another thing entirely, as far as I know. Wheaton in the 60’s was not a Reformed stronghold. I believe that Gothard’s views were primarily shaped by a fundamentalist mindset in reaction to a liberalizing culture. The answer was more laws and rules rather than an emphasis on regeneration and the internal work of sanctification in the individual believer. He began his work helping parents who were frustrated with their teenagers’ rebellion. Any of us who have raised teenagers can identify with their desperation for answers, and Gothard offered a System for that just like our current Female Subordinationists offer a System which supposedly produces happy marriages and families.
I think there was a lot of cross-pollination among these various streams of thought back in the 60’s and 70’s to get us where we are today. The Christian homeschooling movement is another place where ideas crossed over. Rushdoony decreed that homeschooling is the only Biblical way.
The bottom line is that people will use whatever means works if what they desire is to rule over others. We have all been useful idiots, but typically in the present it is much easier to see when other people are being useful idiots. Retrospectively, some of us have been able to realize that we were useful idiots.
That’s enough for a comment box. If you Google these names and movements, you will find a wealth of information.

BL’s post on 5/24/16 adding to the information about Patriarchy’s players in American churches:

Excellent synopsis, Gram!
The charismatic river of Dominionism that came through the shepherding/discipleship movement was via Ern Baxter. He had worked with William Branham from whom Dominionism came through the Manifest Sons of God, The Latter Rain, and the End-Time Harvest Movements.
This particular branch also flows through Mike Bickle (IHOP), C. Peter Wagner (NAR, & ‘Convening Apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles’), Francis Frangipane (River of Life), Che Ahn (former PDI pastor for 19 years, and one the NAR’s apostles), Kenneth Hagin & Kenneth Copeland (health & wealth quacks), Rick Joyner, Paul Cain, Lou Engle, James Goll, Chuck Pierce (Kansas City ‘prophets’), Jack Dennison (CityReach), Paul Cedar (Mission America Coalition), Ed Silvoso (Transformations), Tom White (City-Wide Prayer Movement), George Otis (Sentinel Group), Loren Cunningham (YWAM), Os Hillman (Marketplace Leaders), John Dawson (Taking Our Cities for God), Rick Warren (PDL), Bill Bright (Campus Crusade).
That’s not an exhaustive list. The above folks are connected and interconnected together in mulitple ways.
Finally, one pivotal man who connects the charismatic stream of C. Peter Wagner & the reformed stream of John Piper is Ralph Winter (US Center for World Mission, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement). Winter’s teachings on the Abrahamic covenant (as being the only covenant) – that this (the Abrahamic Covenant) is the ‘secret mission’ of the church.
Quoting Winter:
“Neither Matthew 26:28 nor mark 14:24, in the scene of the Last Supper, speak of the “new covenant, They read, “this is my blood of the covenant” not, as does Luke 22:20, “the new covenant in my blood.”
“Apparently the word “new” is not the principal point of the passage but rather the fact that this act of outpoured blood finally ratifies and enables the same covenant in a new and ultimate sense. The sacrifice of the Cross is thus, at the very least, a definitive renewal of the Abrahamic Covenant, as we have already seen.”
So, there you have it. There is no new covenant. Just a ‘ratification’ and ‘enabling’ of the Abrahamic covenant…
.
Terms to search: City Transformations, Seven Mountains Mandate, Marketplace Movement, Prayer Marching, Taking Our Cities for God, Spiritual Mapping, Spiritual Warfare, Latter Rain, Manifest Sons of God, Coalition on Revival, Global Mapping Project, The Lausanne Covenant, The Lausanne Movement, Loving Our Cities to Christ,

Posted by Ken F. on May 25, 2016, regarding Bruce Ware’s whole Patriarchy/Comp/Eternal Subordination of the Son argument:

“Let me see if I understand Ware’s logic. Woman was made from man, which makes woman lower than man. Man was made from dirt, which makes man lower than dirt? No, wait, that won’t work. Ok, lets try this. Man was made after all the plants and animals, which means man has dominion over all of them. Woman was made after man, which means woman has dominion over man. No, wait, that doesn’t work either. What’s a poor complementarian to do?”

Posted by Deb on May 26, 2016, about the discussion about 9Marks and its abusive practices:

Here’s a post from 2010 that seems just as relevant today.
Nine Marks of an Abusive Church
Those Nine Marks are:
(1) Control-oriented style of leadership
(2) Spiritual elitism
(3) Manipulation of members
(4) Perceived persecution
(5) Lifestyle rigidity
(6) Suppression of dissent
(7) Harsh discipline of members
(8) Denunciation of other churches
(9) Painful exit process
A number of these do seem to apply to some 9Marks churches.

refugee wrote:
What would you say were the 9 (or whatever number) marks of the shepherding movement? Is there a way to sum it up? I can’t seem to get my head around it. I don’t know if there is a CliffNotes version, or not.
I’ll give a shot at an overview of what I know & experienced.
Late 60s – early 70s and the Charismatic Movement swept through the US – impacting all ages (though the largest percentage were highschool & college age) AND all denominations.
People who were not believers as well as people who had been believers and church members for years. These people encountered God, and it changed them. They had tasted and seen that the Lord was good.
I know heroin addicts who stopped overnight and never went back.
I know church members that had been content with feeding on their Sunday sermons, that began voraciously reading Scripture.
I know highschool students who gathered together in groups of 3 or 4 to worship and praise God, to pray to Him and to seek His face.
People continued going to their denominational church, and would meet with other charismatics at other times. Young people who had not been church members, would go wherever they could find a church – to a Southern Baptist church on Sunday mornings, a Methodist church Sunday evening, an Assembly of God on Wednesday night.
And when there wasn’t an official church meeting somewhere, they would get together (again across all denominational lines) in homes, or offices, or the back of a motorcycle shop to worship, to share what they learned that week, to pray for each other, etc.
I say all this to point out that no man was in charge. No organization was determining who did what when.
And in response, several men already in various ministries decided that something needed to be done. There was concern that people were not being held accountable, they might not be maturing.
These were already nationally known speakers and authors, and had established relationships among themselves (that sounds familiar).
It is within the above that the Shepherding/Discipleship movement was launched.
I’ll continue in a following post on what came next.

refugee wrote:
What would you say were the 9 (or whatever number) marks of the shepherding movement? Is there a way to sum it up? I can’t seem to get my head around it. I don’t know if there is a CliffNotes version, or not.
Part 2:
The discipleship leaders were initially involved with a ministry in Florida whose leader committed sexual sins. In response to this ministry’s failure, they sought protection from such failure by committing to each other for accountability.
So, we had a large number of on-fire Christians going from one meeting to another, one denomination to another, caravaning to other cities for some traveling evangelist, spending hours reading books or listening to teaching tapes, as well as talking to and teaching each other.
The men, Mumford, Simpson, Prince & Simpson (Baxter joined later) thought that the burgeoning charismatic movement needed to be accountable to someone and that someone needed to oversee it in order for the people to grow and mature.
They named themselves Christian Growth Ministries.
And in no particular order – they emphasized the importance of:
Restoring biblical church government.
The local church.
Covenant.
Spiritual authority, spiritual covering, delegated authority.
Male authority.
Accountability.
Spiritual covering (everyone had to have a personal shepherd).
Unquestioned obedience to your shepherd.
Wives’ submission & obedience to husbands.
Honoring & serving leadership.
Not gossiping, no negative speech, no spreading strife.
This church – Elitism (we’re the ones who are doing it right).
Not making any decisions without your shepherd’s approval.
Unity (with no place for dissent or disagreement.)
Small shepherding groups.
Obeying your shepherd even if he is wrong & trust God will fix it.
Leaving this church and your are leaving God.
Shunning anyone who has left.
.
I’m sure I’ve overlooked some aspects.

“Mr.H wrote:
core members of the church had left here and there, so that almost no one from my time their remained a current member.”
This is actually quite common in New Calvinist churches, particularly church plants. Here’s the usual cycle based on observations in my area: (1) a young reformer rolls into town with church planting seed money from a parent church or denominational support, (2) someone in the community is approached to serve as the host for a home meeting to discuss the church plant (usually someone who is disgruntled from doing traditional church or who has noble aspirations to start a new work to reach the unchurched), (3) the host invites his friends and others from the community to a “Bible study” (= core group), (4) the group grows as the young reformer passionately talks about hills he would die on and a message that sort of sounds like the gospel, (5) after a few months, the group out-grows the host home and they look for a store-front to rent, school gym, off-hour meeting at another church (most commonly in yuppie areas), (6) the young reformer recruits a cool band and singers, (7) free coffee/donuts and the cool music begin to draw a larger and younger crowd, (8) the flock keeps growing (mostly 20s-40s), (9) the young reformer selects like-minded elders (young ones), (10) the original host of the core group gradually becomes less important to the young reformer – he gets wise to the scheme and leaves, (11) other core group members begin to feel left out as they become distanced from the cool pastor while others take their place as the new core – they, too, begin to see the deception and exit, (12) the old core group members are shunned in the community.
All sounds like God, doesn’t it?

“Lydia wrote:
Jesus had scathing words for the religious leaders of his time.”
Absolutely! What defies explanation is, how are today’s religious leaders so oblivious to this fact?
How are they able to read the Gospels and be completely blind to His continuous warnings about, and rebukes to, religious leaders?
They have built their mountainous house of complimentarianism cards on less than a half-dozen verses. They have constructed a vast tower on ‘church discipline’ on less than a half-dozen verses. And in BOTH cases the majority of those half-dozen verses are being viewed (and twisted) through their testosterone-soaked, apostolic-authority filters.
BUT, the massive number of warnings, in both Old & New Testaments regarding false leaders, bad leaders, abusive leaders – it’s as if those don’t even exist.
Where are the books, videos, teaching materials and conferences on Abusive Leaders?
They want to be the door, they want to decide who is in and who is out. I ran across the following excerpt from Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers on John 10:1 at biblehub.com:
“The Pharisees claimed for themselves that they were shepherds of Israel. They decreed who should be admitted to, and who should be cast out from the fold. They professed to be interpreters of God’s truth, and with it to feed His flock.
Pharisees, shepherds! what did they, with their curses and excommunications, know of the tenderness of the Shepherd who “shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young”?
Pharisees feed the flock of God! What had they, with their pride and self-righteousness, ever known of the infinite love and mercy of God; or what had their hearts ever felt of the wants and woes of the masses of mankind?
This poor blind beggar was an example of their treatment of the weaker ones of the flock. In spirit, if not in deed (John 9:22; John 9:34), they had thrust him out from the fold of God. The true Shepherd had sought and found this lost sheep, who is now standing near, in His presence and in that of the false shepherds. He teaches who the Shepherd and what the flock of God really are.
THAT sounds familiar!
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
Sometimes you discover, when you’ve been officially excommunicated, or coerced out, or just spiritually beaten and thrown outside the ‘church doors’ – that Christ is also outside the ‘church doors’.
As He was for the blind man in John 9, who was kicked out of the synagogue after Jesus healed him. Mr. Formerly Blind Guy, brought into the synagogue for QUESTIONING, kept giving the credit to Jesus and would not submit to his religious leaders’ authority and instructions.
So, the Religious Keepers of the Keys to the Kingdom wielded their authority and shut him outside the door – and then…
Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
(Keep in mind that Mr. Formerly Blind Man had never seen Jesus, so he could not visually identify that his Healer was speaking to him.)
He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him? Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.”
And he worshiped Him.
This is one of my favorite chapters in Scripture.
And I believe that it is the first record in Scripture of someone worshiping Jesus after He began His ministry.
Not bad for an excommunicated, outside the church, former blind guy…
.

Another good resource to refute the teachings of Calvinism is Adrian Rogers’ booklet “Predestined for Hell? Absolutely not!”. Copies can be obtained at minimal cost by contacting Love Worth Finding Ministries (901-382-7900, http://www.lwf.org).

The agnostic Austrian Jew, Stefan Zweig , wrote a book titled: The Right to Heresy.
It is about Castello.http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=215
The weird thing about history of this period is that the church state archives did not really open up to many American researchers until after the world wars. There was an official history that many still quote today. But sifting through political documents, laws, council meetings, correspondence and such paints a different picture than what old Europe wanted us to see.

siteseer wrote:
One thing that impressed me in regard to unity was Corrie Ten Boom’s description of how all the Christians found each other and bonded together in the concentration camps, regardless of which tradition they had come from. The unity is there, perhaps, but not always visible under normal circumstances.
The one non-fiction book I have read the most times is *Grey is the Color of Hope* by Irina Ratushinskaya. (About once every 2 years for the last 20 years.)http://www.amazon.com/Grey-Color-Hope-Irina-Ratushinskaya/dp/0679724478/
It is her account of the first year in the “political prisoner” zone of the Soviet Gulag after her arrest for “writing anti-Soviet poetry.” But really, it was for her work in monitoring human rights in the USSR and documenting the lack of Soviet adherence to the Helsinki Accords.
The women’s political prisoner zone varied from about a dozen to 20 women, all living in one house. Several were from Jewish or atheist backgrounds, the others from a wide range of Christian backgrounds: Russian Orthodox, Catholic or Uniate (Orthodox who follow the Pope), Pentecostal, and “Baptist” (which was often used as a catch-all term for everything else). Imagine living in a relatively confined space 24/7/365 — except when put into forced isolation or the hospital — and having to divide up the food, cooking, and chores, and having vigorous discussions about how to maintain dignity in the face of dehumanization and persecution by KGB and prison personnel. It really is an amazing journal … and it shows how they conducted dialog, ultimately encouraged freedom of conscience for each woman to decide as she would on critical issues facing them as individuals and especially as a group (such as going on hunger strikes in protest), and how they dealt with “moles” who sought to create discord.
Perhaps situations of such extreme marginalization and suffering from genuine persecution bring forth the highest common denominator for unity — and it is not denominations, but freedom in Christ. Also instructive is how this group as a community extended to all members the same respect, dignity, and freedom of conscience and choice — whether they were followers of Christ or not.
Read this engaging book with an eye to see how the Spirit works not merely despite differences, but through them, to bring interpersonal unity. Maybe unity is not so unexpected in situations where those who bring oppression do so by alternating between rules/conformity and unpredictability/chaos. It makes sense to me at least that the “liturgical rule” must be freedom to counteract the conformity, and trust of fellow community members to offer security in the midst of chaos.

Velour wrote:
Speaking of Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem’s semi-Arian heresy, The Eternal Subordination of the Son, Ken F. made this insightful post on May 25th here:
““Let me see if I understand Ware’s logic. Woman was made from man, which makes woman lower than man. Man was made from dirt, which makes man lower than dirt? No, wait, that won’t work. Ok, lets try this. Man was made after all the plants and animals, which means man has dominion over all of them. Woman was made after man, which means woman has dominion over man. No, wait, that doesn’t work either. What’s a poor complementarian to do?”
Another line of thought of complementarians takes the curse God placed on the woman as the norm: “And he will rule over you” becomes a normative mantra to support the their view that men are supposed to rule over women.
So let’s apply that same normative mantra to men from the other curses:
“In toil you will eat of [the ground] All the days of your life.” That means men are only allowed to eat from what they personally produce from the field. And only if it involves personal toiling. No more restaurants. No more grocery stores. No more pubs. No more home-cooked meals. I guess it even means no fasting because men have to eat on all days.
“And you will eat the plants of the field.” Same as above, but also say goodbye to all meat and dairy products. That will put a damper on potlucks. But on the bright side, it would force men to drink black coffee, which is the only manly way to drink it.
“By the sweat of your face You will eat bread.” No more air conditioning – all bread must be eaten while sweating from the face. This could also mean that it is sinful to live in cool climates, unless one can find a hot place to eat bread. I suppose one could create rules about whether or not sweating is mandatory while eating non-bread foods.
If we think that it’s ok to resist these other curses, then why would we in any way want to retain the curse of men ruling over women? I am so glad that my wife is strong enough to not need me to dominate her like that.

Posted by Brad/FuturistGuy on June 4, 2016, regarding the Eternal Subordination of the Son/Comp doctrine.

Nancy2 wrote:
If “proving” that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father supports their claim that women are eternally subordinate to men, wouldn’t it also indicate eternal subordination of sons, in general, to fathers, in general?
I think your point hints at a paradigm issue that is crucial to understand; there is an underlying epistemology mode of processing information that hyper-categorizes. It seems the more deeply you believe things must be classified, the more pervasive the categorizing becomes, and with it, control — which naturally leads to hierarchy. There’s always one category that is divinely designed to control/cover the other.
So, it isn’t just men overlording women, it’s old versus young, leaders versus laypeople, church versus state/culture (there is no theology about Christians willingly letting state/culture trump Church is there?), homelanders versus foreigners …
At the extreme end of this kind of thinking process, it then looks like Bill Gothard’s “umbrellas of protection” where a certain class “covers” the one below it and mediates for them to the one above it. This is the espresso of the Shepherding Movement for leaders over laity and of Patriarchalism for men over women and adults over children.
If you take such adherents at the logical conclusion of their thinking systems, there is no such thing as “one-another” between classes, only within one category.
Final thought: Get to the bottom of what seems to be motivating this and it is FEAR. Not “fear of God” in the sense of respect for His awe and majesty and power. But fear as in angst of falling short, fear things will go wrong, fear because things “should” be perfect.
And, according to authoritative Scripture, what is fear the opposite of? Love.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18, NIV, Biblegateway
Hierarchicalists love correctness and control, but law is not love, and fear does not change hearts.
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There is a site I book marked on my old laptop years ago that linked to quite a few of his letters. I liked it because the link outlined who the letter was written to and the date. I will try to find it.
Calvin wrote over 4000 letters in addition to everything else. They are a gold mine but tedious to slog through. But in them a line or two can be pivotal.
For example, long before Servetus comes to Geneva, Calvin writes a colleague that if Servetus ever comes to Geneva, he won’t leave alive. His burning was premeditated. And the fact there was no law for burning foreigners for heresy. They were usually banished.
We can also see that he actually colluded with a magisterial French Catholic on Servetus. Calvin hated him because Servetus had dared mark up his writings with what he thought was error and sent them to Calvin. (There is evidence they attended the same school in France at one time)
After the burning. Calvin whines like a school boy in a letter about how people were treating him. (I got the sense some lost respect for him)
The letters give us insight into his dark psyche. I will link when I find it. There are books you can buy with his letter compilations but the site I found years ago was free. And the letters not edited from what I could tell. I tend not to trust some sources on this. But that is just me.

Lydia posted this on June 4, 2016, regarding Bruce Ware and his Eternal Subordination of the Son heresy to justify his Complementarian beliefs:

Jim G. wrote:
Determinism cannot distinguish between will and essence meaningfully. A
I am assuming this is where terminology like ontological and economic is an attempt by the determinists to make it fit?
Btw: I read Giles’ book years back refuting Ware and was astonished to read how Ware blatantly edited Anthanasius to make his words fit ESS. It was a major eye opener for me at the time.

at the risk of bringing up movies …
Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship is one of the funniest adaptations of a Jane Austen story I’ve seen in years. It’s nice to see Kate Beckinsale took a break from slumming it in the Underworld series.

Denny says:
…we must not fear making a claim that is disturbingly counter-cultural and yet strikingly biblical, a claim that the less-than-evangelical feminists understand increasingly: Christianity is undergirded by a vision of patriarchy.
First, class, pick out the assertions which are embarrassingly naked of argument. Second, class, spot the “attack on the person” fallacy (hint: the “f” word.) Third, class, identify the emphatic and prejudicial language concealing a lack of facts and argument. Extra credit: Explain reasonably and concisely what “vision of patriarchy” actually means. Extra extra credit: Explain reasonably and concisely how said “vision of patriarchy” undergirds Christianity (must explain the structural engineering metaphor to receive all points.)
That’s a taste.

Ken F. posted this on June 5, 2016, in response to Gram3’s challenge to TWW posters about Complentarism/Patriarchy/Eternal Subordination of the Son and its logical fallicies.

“If complementarians are to reclaim the debate, we must not fear making a claim that is disturbingly counter-cultural and yet strikingly biblical, a claim that the less-than-evangelical feminists understand increasingly: Christianity is undergirded by a vision of patriarchy.”
++++++++++
What an assignment – pretty stiff challenge because the statement is such a mess of vague terms. They can wiggle words to say just about anything when they don’t define them. I’ll give it a stab:
“reclaim” assumes that complementarians once had the upper hand. When was that? Evidence? It’s a nice word to throw in becase it preys (prays?) on people’s loss aversion (people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains – from Wikipedia). The reality is they have nothing to reclaim because complementarians have never been in the majority. Pure spin.
“the debate” makes it sound like there are two sides and that one side can win. It pushes the discussion into extreme views: one is either a complentarian with all that baggage, or one is a liberal feminist who denies all gender differences. The reality is at neither extreme. And there is no true debate because there are no official groups who are taking the two extreme sides. It’s an attempt to spin facts in order to whip up frenzy and make it sound like there is something to win, or at least something not to lose.
“we must not fear making a claim” – This is a funny statement. I would think they would want to say “we must not fear standing for the truth.” It’s almost like this is an admission to making up something new.
“disturbingly counter-cultural” – How does one define counter-cultural in a multi-cultural environment? “Counter-cultural” is just a buzz word that has almost no meaning. It’s meant to sound brave and heroic, but they forget that all the heretics were counter to the normative church culture. “Disturbingly” is a disturbing word to describe a Christian movement. More spin in an effort to sound heroic.
“yet strikingly biblical” is another meaningless phrase. First, the word “yet” contrasts “biblical” with “counter-cultural.” Isn’t Christianity already supposed to be counter-cultural? So it sounds like this is setting up a double-negative. It seems like “and” would have been a better word choice. Unless they mean to upset the current Christian culture, which is what they are doing. Inserting “strikingly” makes no sense other than to inflate the language.
“less-than-evangelical feminists” – What does “less than evangelical” mean? Is it assuming that no feminist can be fully evangelical? What do they mean by feminist? If it’s someone advocating equal pay for equal work, that hardly disqualifies a person from being an evangelical. What does it even mean to be evangelical? There is no clear definition for evangelical. So this is a nearly meaningless string of words.
“understand increasingly:” What evidence does he have that “less-than-evangelical feminists” are increasing in their understanding of his conclusion? I think it’s the opposite. It’s spin to make it sound like complementarians are gaining ground.
“Christianity is undergirded by a vision of patriarchy.” – This is the point they have yet to prove. But say it enough times and it begins to sound true. Christianity has been infected by it too often in the past, just like it has been infected by lust for the power of the state. But it’s not the “Biblical” norm.
I have to skip the extra credit points – I cannot begin to imagine how to answer.

Posted by Lydia about the Comp-promoters of the ESV Bible quashing Gordon Fee, a real gentleman and the TNIV Bible (Today’s New Internatonal Version).

Velour wrote:
I am deprogramming from NeoCalvinism/Comp and having been seriously *hoodwinked*.
Can you explain the whole TNIV Bible version and how it got quashed by the ESV/NeoCalvinists/Comp proponents?
I’ve heard about it. I just don’t know all of the players.
One of the problems, believe it or not, is that men like Gordon Fee are true gentleman and scholars and don’t partake in the same tactics. They don’t fight dirty. They thought they could just make their case.
In the end Zondervan folded on the issue. LifeWay would not carry it. (Back when that mattered)
Here is an article by Fee and Strauss. Typical of how such men responded to the ridiculous propaganda that was basically culture warring and had nothing to do with scholarship..http://www.sermoncentral.com/articleb.asp?article=Fee-Strauss-Gender-and-Translation&ac=true
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Book recommended by KenF on June 5, 2015, dealing with Penal Substitionary Atonement:

I also read the book on the four views of atonement I mentioned above and “Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement” by Gustaf Aulen and M.A. A. G. Hebert.

Lots of good thought & discussion here about the early church & the Orthodox church’s views on the atonement & on PSA: http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/?s=Penal+Substitution
Some of it boils down to the whole question of whether it’s really believable that God would forget to tell the church central & important stuff about the atonement for a thousand years, in a similar way with what is believed about the scope of God’s salvation & man’s given ability to resist it. Those who walked with Jesus & the Apostles & passed on these teachings, including eventually recording stuff & forming the canon, is it really credible they got such fundamental stuff (according to Piper et al) so wrong? If we tried that argument the other way round – oh the church taught PSA right from the start but now a 1000 years in we’ve come up with Christus Victor – we’d get laughed out of court.
The Orthodox seem to look at the atonement in a variety of ways, with any imagery regarding payment of debt (which isn’t much) being subservient to the overall flow of the whole texts. Overall it seems much more relationship oriented – sin cuts us off from God, & Jesus brings us back.

I first read that in “The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present Day” by Justo L Gonzalez. It was a good read. It’s been some years since I read it, so I should probably go back for a refresher. The one point he made that stuck is the “church” has always had to respond to the pressure of the times. This resulted in many practices and customs that we might not like, but before we get too harsh on our ancestors in the faith, we have to remember that we are also creating customs and practices as we respond to the pressures of our time. In that light, many of of the customs passed down to us make more sense. Not that it means they should apply to our times, but I have a better understanding for why the customs were put in place.

I just finished reading the book “Pagan Christianity?” by Frank Viola and George Barna. I would imagine this book has been discussed here ages ago. If you have not read this book, you might want to look it up on Amazon and read some reviews.
They discuss how far different so-called ‘church’ is today as it was delivered to the first believers through Jesus and then the apostles. There is hardly anything that is done in Christendom churches today that resembles the first century church. To me, this was an incredible book. It seems well researched and if you have not read it, you will find that most of the things done in ‘churches’ today do not stem from Christianity, but from pagan practices. Worth mulling over.

Daisy posted this on 6/8/16 about the TNIV Bible, the one that the ESV boys/Comp proponents have tried to quash, and did a very good job. Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood was up in arms about the TNIV Bible, which must mean that I will like it!

@ Velour:
I was trying to find you a link or two about the TNIV when I found out that Wayne Grudem wrote a book about it. He’s a complementarian, so he’s probably not in favor of the TNIV. The title is
“The TNIV and the Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy” by Wayne Grudem
TNIV debate renewed in critique of new NIVhttp://www.bpnews.net/35458/tniv-debate-renewed-in-critique-of-new-niv
Six years after the evangelical world debated the merits and appropriateness of making Bible translations more gender inclusive for words dealing with people, the divide is becoming evident once again.
At issue is the 2011 translation of the New International Version (NIV), which is being released six years after the full version of the 2005 TNIV translation — which never gained wide support — was published. Zondervan later discontinued the TNIV (Today’s New International Version).

Posted by Nancy2 on July 5, 2016, about the Eternal Subordination of the Son heresy promoted by Ware and Grudem:

I have another one of those off the wall questions. If the Son is eternally subordinate/submissive to the Father, and we are to be “Christ-like” wouldn’t ESS/ERAS negate Gen.2:24 …… ” And a son shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ……” ?

Gram3’s post on July 10, 2016, on discussion about Mary Kassian, other promoters of Complementarism (women are second-class), Bruce Ware, and Wayne Grudem:

Christiane wrote:
looking for some reason WHY the bizarre attack on the Trinity.
The Why is that feminism was making great strides in the 70’s. There were calls to open the ministry to women, even in conservative churches. That is one big reason the PCA was formed. Put that together with the rising tide of abortion-on-demand, and a lot of things became conflated which should have been considered separately. “Feminism” became the reason for EveryBadThingThatHappensInCulture.
This was the time when Grudem was building his career. This issue became his career. George Knight III actually came up with the idea of Roles in the Trinity and between the sexes in order to foreclose the possibility that it might be thinkable that women could be elders. The new PCA was under a lot of pressure, and, IMO, needed a wedge to pry off more people who were dissatisfied with the PCUSA. And they also needed a defense against the scholarship of evangelical egalitarians.
This is not a new thing for Grudem. It wasn’t even a new thing when Danvers was issued. I think that both Danvers and Knight’s just-so story of hierarchy within the Trinity were panicked responses to change they viewed as undesirable.

I tried copying the text of my paper into a comment here. It’s on the long side and has not yet cleared customs. But here’s an appendix that could be helpful.
Some potential pitfalls of accountability:
Useless against the flesh.
• Colossians 2:20-23 – “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!’ (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”
Results in an impossible life of “sin management.” The Pharisees excelled in accountability, but failed to obtain adequate righteousness. How much accountability would be good enough?
• Matthew 5:20 – “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Leads to a “bait and switch” form of Christianity. People are lured into the church with love and grace, and then pounded with performance expectations after they are in. Jesus always explained expectations up front and never moved the goalposts. He never tricked people into the kingdom.
• Luke 9:57-62 – “As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, ‘I will follow You wherever You go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’ And He said to another, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But He said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.’ Another also said, ‘I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’”
Replaces one kind of sin with another. For example, if the fear of embarrassment is the motivation for better behavior, then the replacement sin is pride.
Creates a condition or attitude where there is a human mediator between man and God.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 – “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,”
Focuses the attention on outward behavior rather than core beliefs and motivations.
• Matthew 5:27-28 – “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’”
Focuses our attention on our flesh, which is exactly the wrong result.
• Romans 8:6-8 “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
We become man-pleasers more than God-pleasers.
• Galatians 1:10 – “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.”
It can result in us “falling from grace” and back into performance under the law.
• Galatians 3:3 – “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

Bill M.’s excellent comment about Perry Noble stepping down from the pulpit of his mega church due to alcoholism and how church leaders misapply Matthew 18:15-17:

Good call on pointing out the Matthew 18 reference. It irritates me to no end that Matthew 18 is continually hauled out for dealing with hierarchical relationships, it is a lousy application of Jesus words and besides it just doesn’t work when going to the Boss. That established, authoritarians love to invoke Matthew 18 for their self protection. They and their enforcers have found it a great tool to keep discerning individuals divided and silenced.
Please note that when it comes to the ruling elite they change the rules for the end game, instead of “telling it to the church” all “the church” will hear is “unfortunate choices” were made etc. They will likely claim concern for Noble, and it will be likely true to some extent, but they will also be protecting the cash cow so it can be neatly cleaned up, groomed, and put back in service at a later date.
If these guys are going to improperly invoke Matthew 18, they should at least be consistent, but they can’t even do that.

Nick, posted these on the other thread about movies. So to placate H.U.G., I will post them on my secret piece of real estate here.

Loosely on the topic of complementarianism, and before I go to bed (it being 11pm here in Blighty), I wonder whether there are any other Wartburgers who like all of the following movies:
 The Life of Brian (obvious)
 Event Horizon (cult – in the movie sense)
 Fish Story (obscure)

Daisy wrote:
So when I hear complementarians try to defend male headship, by saying men don’t REALLY want power and control over women, by saying what a hard, serious, stressful, burden it is for husbands to lead and control a wife, I sometimes roll my eyes.
Yes, that is what I always heard. So, when I started a serious study on the issue over 20 years ago with my trusty Strong’s 4 inch thick concordance and lexicon and found out what the Bible really said about the issue for myself, I thought my complementarian male friends would be thrilled that I thought women had more responsibility than was thought they did and that the heavy burden of responsibility that the men always complained about should mutually be shared. My husband sure seemed to relax a bit more and wasn’t so anxious. None of them had the time to study the Bible like I did while the kids were in school so I didn’t feel like I was being a know-it-all. But that was when I found out that the men LIKED the sense of being in control and being the boss and being the head and all that that the preacher told them they had. They became angry at me for my findings and wouldn’t even sit down and look at the scriptures with me. I cried and cried. This was all before I knew there was anything in Christianity besides complementarianism (no one had capitalized on the name yet though). I thought I was alone until the internet came along. I cried and cried again after reading Catherine Bushnell’s God’s Word to Women. And for the record, I think a man would have cried and cried too if he had lived my experience.

As Grudem’s own work on the meaning of kephale states, he used the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) project at the University of California-Irvine to look up the word in its database. There were 12,000 examples; but he felt it was too large of a sample and ‘too much work’ so he limited the results to just 3,226. He also used teaching assistants and their staff to check the material for him, he didn’t actually look them all up himself on the computer. I find his explanation that it would be ‘enough’ unconvincing. When you want to prove something beyond the shadow of a doubt, you don’t do half-measures and let other people do the work for you. You put in the time so that when a person stops you on the street and asks you to explain to them what source number 2,173 was and why kephale had to mean authority in that instance, you don’t have to refer them to your teaching assistant to answer them for you. Somebody else had to be the one who input into the computer database what the source was, tell the computer what each word was, what it’s meaning was and Grudem would have no idea if that work was double-checked by the various lexicons. Then his assertion that if anybody wants to challenge it, they should do their own work and check up all 12,000 (or more) sources just goes to show that he’s shifting the burden of proof. It all sounds to me like it’s little more than: “I told the computer to tell me so that I could tell you it’s so.” Looking at his results, it’s odd that in the secular uses, kephale means “authority” in 2% of the instances (a total of 49/3226), yet somehow in Scripture, he identifies it to mean “authority” in 16% of the instances even though the word “kephale” appears far less frequently in Scripture – 75 according to Strongs. 2% of 75 is 1.5; if the use of the word was consistent, kephale cannot mean “authority” unless there was more frequent use of the word to mean “authority” and it wasn’t so extremely rare to mean that – and that’s just outright assuming the 16% he says it means “authority” really do mean “authority” odds are not all of them do.

August 1, 2016 was the 50 year anniversary of the Aug. 1, 1966 University of Texas at Austin deadly clock tower shooting. Out of the Blue. A Texas Standard Documentary records that terrible day. John Fox (Austic comic actor Artly Snuff) and Claire Wilson’s recollections are powerful. Oh, what Rita Starpattern and others did that day. Better told in the words of the wounded:

another film that illustrates Christus Victor is Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino”
to fully understand the ending, you need to see the whole movie; but the ending is classic Christus Victor and it is stunningly realistic
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My condolences to you and your family on the passing of your mother-in-law, Polly. May the peace of Christ be with you all.

I saw some of your readers placed their expressions of sympathy under your and Deb’s other blog subjects posted after Polly’s death August 1. I hope you see mine tucked here under the book tab because I just finished reading

Being Mortal – Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

The book is easy reading, educational, and contemplative. Reviews can be found on-line. It was available to be checked out or downloaded to an electronic device for free, or course, from my public library. I read it because of my personal experiences and questions and recommend it.

Well talk about coincidences. I am staying in Polly's condo and just pulled out that book, Being Mortal, from her stack of books. Thank you so much. Today is her funeral. She had good final months with us and we were holding her hands as she passed away.

Dee, Interesting about the book. Popular at one time I guess? And, yes, you did good by Polly. Presence and much more. Our favorite earthbound things from family members who passed on are found in our kitchen. They connect us to the once daily rhythm of their lives as we go about ours. Gram’s mixing bowl set and recipe box, Pop’s fish fryer, MIL’s utensils and faded years-past crocheted calendar towels. The kitchen drawer is a hodgepodge of their and our everyday flatware. Though we keep our home simple, we have saved a few books they enjoyed and Mom’s well worn reading chair. Old age doesn’t always mean who is on the precipice of eternity, but our friends who loved us and were up in years had time to think about it and gifted us with a few of their tchotchkes and books as they down sized their homes. Best to you and your husband as you make your way through today, the day of Polly’s funeral, and in the days ahead in taking care of Polly’s earthbound matters.

Well talk about coincidences. I am staying in Polly’s condo and just pulled out that book, Being Mortal, from her stack of books. Thank you so much. Today is her funeral. She had good final months with us and we were holding her hands as she passed away.

About two years ago I could not give a good explanation of reformed theology and could not describe the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism, even though I had been an active Christian for more than 30 years. That changed a couple years ago when my sons started asking tough questions (they were attending a TGC-listed SBC church in their college town). I spent more than a year in an almost OCD-like obsession digging into the details. Diving into Calvinism was a pretty depressing journey for me. I discovered that Arminianism is not that much different in the basic assumptions, but the conclusions are very different. It was this research that showed me these are not the only choices. The Eastern tradition of Christianity did a much better job in retaining the teachings of the early church – they did not go down the path of the Augustinian/Aristotelian/Platonic view of God that is the foundation of both Calvinism and Arminianism.
I highly recommend going back to the early church. There are many great resources available for free. One of my favorites so far is “On the Incarnation” by Athanasius. I’ve read quite a lot of articles and a few books by Eastern Orthodox teachers. That has been very eye-opening.
I’ve been very encouraged lately by the ministries of Baxter Kruger and Paul Young (author of The Shack). Baxter Kruger has discovered the early church and seems to be doing a great job of unpacking what the early church believed. Here is a link to some of his lectures and articles: http://perichoresis.org/free-lecture-series/. I am currently working through the series called “The Shack Revisited: Orama Great Barrier Island 2014.” All I can say is Wow. If you need a break from Calvinism and the related Western arguments, Kruger offers another side. He grew up Presbyterian and Calvinist, so he does a great job in very graciously showing where Calvinism misses the mark.

Velour wrote:
I need to study this at some point as well. I’m currently deprogramming from another false teaching that my ex-NeoCalvinist church taught
Have you ever read “The Shack” by William Paul Young? I initially avoided it because I don’t like to jump on bandwagons. I eventually read it and got a lot out of it, but was not quite sure what to do with it because it was such a different way of viewing God. I read it again when I was in the middle of my research on Calvinism. Based on what I’ve learned, I highly recommend it, if only for the purpose of rattling your cage. He does a very good job of capturing what the early church seemed to believe about the Trinity and the atonement. But if there was nothing else that would cause me to recommend it, the new-Calvinists condemn it as heresy. I don’t think I could come up with a stronger endorsement than that. 🙂
Since your pastor was trained by John MacArthur’s seminary, a great place to unlearn penal substitution is to see what John MacArthur teaches about it and then believe the opposite. Most new-Calvinists say something along the lines of “penal substitution is the skeleton upon which all the other atonement theories hand.” But MacArthur teaches that it is the ONLY way to understand the atonement. John MacArthur goes so far as to teach “the ultimate reality is that believers have been saved from God.” Wow! It sounds like he thinks Jesus is not God. He could have meant the Father, but I wonder what he thinks the Holy Spirit was doing when the Father was venting his wrath on the Son. And what would he say about 2 Corinthians 5:19 – “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”? If our reconciliation happened on the cross, then the Father was “in Christ” on the cross. That’s how the Bible describes it, not how penal substitution describes it.

Velour wrote:
No, I haven’t read The Shack because the NeoCalvinists at my ex-church said that the author was a heretic. I will now read it on your recommendation.
Two years ago Emmanuel Enid (Wade’s church) had Paul Young come and preach. At some point during the weekend, Paul shared his life story. I remember listening to it and found it very moving. I believe it is important to know Young’s background because it helps those reading The Shack understand certain angles of his book.
It’s a long, but captivating message, which can be accessed at this link:https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=paul+young+and+emmanuel+enid+and+youtube&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002

Deb wrote:
At some point during the weekend, Paul shared his life story. I remember listening to it and found it very moving. I believe it is important to know Young’s background because it helps those reading The Shack understand certain angles of his book.
In part two of this series he gives a very detailed version of his story (almost 90 minutes): http://perichoresis.org/the-shack-revisited-orama-great-barrier-island-2014/.
Trauma alert! This is a very detailed story of abuse.
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@ Velour:
I learned about the eastern viewpoint from my godmother who was Byzantine Catholic (that’s Catholic, but a different ‘rite’ than the Latin ‘rite’);
but I also always enjoyed two other specific influences:
there is a blog favored by Imonk called ‘Father Orthoduck’ which is good thoughtful reading;
and then there is the music of the East, which you have yourself shared here (and thank you); I particularly admire the ‘basso profundo’ a capella voices which are so deep and reverent in their singing of the eastern hymns;
and I am in awe of the work of Roman Hurko and here is a sample of his choral work:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHi-1taeqeo
The writings of Athanasius and the Cappodocian (sp?) Fathers is something I greatly admire. These Fathers of the Church represented a more Eastern point of view, which helped save the young Church from the heretical teachings of that day.
I am also an admire of John Chrysostom’s writing, which is so faith-filled, it radiates Our Lord’s light.
And Ken F. has shared a MAGNIFICENT site by Baxter Kruger, this:http://perichoresis.org/free-lecture-series/
That should get you started. And for atmosphere, while you read, make some samovar tea! Good to know the faith of the ones who came before us. They are also with us in the Body of Christ even now. 🙂

Charles Spurgeon wrote:
“This post is just silly. You know not of which you speak, as the historic SBC was overwhelmingly Calvinistic in belief.”
Max responded to Charles Spurgeon as follows:
The spirit of Spurgeon lives! It is sadly true that SBC founders were Calvinists. They used their theology to defend their slave-holding rights, feeling that sovereign God was surely on their side in the Civil War. When early Confederate victories turned to defeat, these racist Baptists changed their tune! Soon after the Civil War, Southern Baptists began to distance themselves from reformed theology and for the last 150 years have been non-Calvinist in belief and practice … until the New Calvinist rebellion came in by stealth and deception to take Generation Xer’s and Millennials back to SBC roots they know nothing about. “Silly” is not a word I would use to describe the mess this post reports on.
Max’s remarks to ‘Charles Spurgeon’ are so enlightening that I wanted to repeat them for those who may not have read his comment.
Thanks Max!

Two books that might be of interest for those who want to read the Church Fathers but are jumpy about reading outside of a Protestant viewpoint might want to check out these two books by James Payton. He has a good understanding of EO teachings but has remained a Protestant. I found them very interesting and have been reading through the latter for awhile.
Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition
A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today

Lydia wrote:
One of the contributors was James MacDonald, of elephant debt fame, who had just recently wrote an article, “Congregationalism is from Satan”!
Beside the point, but isn’t there another James Mac/McDonald who is Quiverfull? For me it’s as confusing as the various Jareds who pop up in the SBC.
Anyway, this question screams at me: What do James MacDonald, Mark Driscoll, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, Paige Patterson and C.J. Mahaney have in common? I apologize to all the others I should have included. It is not primarily doctrine which has been amazingly flexible for these men and others. It isn’t practice, which is similarly flexible, at least between the clergy class and the pewpeons. It is centralized power. It is empire building, and I do not mean the Kingdom of Jesus, the Messiah. Each of these men has built man-centered empires and has called disciples after themselves to multiply their ranks and expand their empires.
What I have observed over these many years in evangelicalism is the erasure of long-standing boundaries (which are healthy, IMO) which protected other communities from the pathology of each of those communities. ISTM that we now have an amalgamated evangelicalism that has no boundaries of principle. And the unifying rally cry for this process has been “Unity” or “For the sake of the Kingdom” or “For the Gospel” or my personal favorite “For the fame of Jesus’ name.”
It seems to be the spirit of the age that every aspect of our lives–secular and church–is trending toward less freedom, less individual agency/responsibility/freedom, less virtue/principles/values, and toward a weird sort of pseudo-hyper-individualism that is a disaster in the making if one is concerned about human potential and flourishing (oh, how I hate the way that word has been re-purposed.)

Relevant to this discussion, and the aforementioned Society of Evangelical Arminians, my comment is about Dr. Roger Olson. The SEA website had a video about him in which he was interviewed, and he was asked (at the 43:00 mark), “What is the basic difference [between] Calvinism and Arminianism? What would it be?” He replied, “Well that gets right down to it, doesn’t it? I think the basic difference is pictures of God. For me, that’s the main difference of all… A certain picture of God, which I cannot accept, which is that God willingly passes over people He could save, because salvation is unconditional. So He could save everyone—there’s no obstacle there—He’s not lacking in power, He doesn’t save some people because He sees something good in them. So in theory, at least, and I can’t think of in practice why not, God could save everyone. Why doesn’t He? Well, some Calvinists say, “That’s a mystery.” It’s a mystery I have problems living with. And so I think it comes down to character of God issues. For me, the reason I can’t be a Calvinist is because it portrays God as unloving and arbitrary. Now I know that Calvinists don’t believe that, but if I were a Calvinist, that’s what I would have to believe. That’s the only way I could make sense of it is to believe that God is not loving toward all people, and arbitrary in His choice of whom to save. So the basic difference to me comes down to the character of God.”
The video is still available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0RWF_XByMM

Someone on the threads posted this wonderful book, for those deprogramming from Calvinism (and in

my case NeoCalvinism): Reconsidering TULIP by Alexander J. Renault.

117 pages and packed with excellent information!

From Amazon’s website: “A biblical, philosophical, and historical response to the Reformed doctrines of predestination. This book is an Eastern Orthodox assessment of TULIP, bringing to the table 1,500 years of theology and thinking which is usually absent in the typical Calvinist vs. Arminian debates.”

***************
Perhaps Ken F. recommended this book since he’s been studying Calvinism and answering his sons’ questions. If so, kudos to Ken F. (or whomever first posted this book). I am so grateful.

Bill M wrote:
A good book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”. I found it very helpful.
I’m an introvert, and I joyfully submit and yield all extrovert functions to Gramp3. INFP loves and respects her ESTJ. We are—complementary.

A not uncommon neocalvinist perspective on God:
Created the entire universe not to express his passionate love and enjpoy an intimate relationship with those whom he created, but did it purely for his own glory.
Predetermines every single movement of every single atom, including every single action of every single person, then damns the ones whom he unilaterally chooses–nay, forces–to do evil to be cast out and shunned forever.
So, when neocalvinist pastors create their own church kingdoms in no way to express passionate love, set themselves above parishioners and so have intimate relationships with no one, and do everything for their own glory, why does it surprise us?
When neocalvinist pastors attempt to control the behavior, actions and even thoughts of every single person under their control, and seem to take great pleasure in casting out and shunning their followers forever, why does it surprise us?
The are only reflecting the image of their god.

If it were a death, there would be a body.
If my loss were physical, I would be able to speak of it.
As it is, there is no corpse to dress, no attire to select,
No funeral to attend, or service to order.
It has been a long slow death, anyway.
The death of a dream
The death of an ideal
The death of desire
I wanted the lovely intangibles
Beauty
Goodness
Truth
I wanted …
Belonging
Being
Blessing
I wanted..
To be heard
To be seen
To be known
I left my gifts at the altar
And left
Quietly,
Silently,
Invisibly.

Law Prof wrote:
Nancy2 wrote:
Robert wrote:
I’m confused. Can’t we have respect for men and respect for women? It’s like there is this constant pool of being demeaned that has to be spread around to some people so we might as well dump it on the women.
The biblical answer is “No.” Ephesians 5 makes it clear that a husband is to love his wife, protect her, and provide for her …….. while a wife is to respect her husband and submit to him “in all things”. Absolutely nothing is said about a husband respecting his wife or submitting to her in anything for any reason ……. or a wife loving her husband, or protecting him, or providing for him.
So it is written! So shall it be done!
I wrote this in a bit of a sarcastic tone, but there is nothing sarcastic about it in the opinions of millions of “Christian” evangelical men. It is the “Gospel”!
Yes, to follow their prescribed path for the function of men and women and the church one has to take a few verses which were written to a patriarchal culture in which women were considered property and due to cultural constraints had virtually no legitimate means of supporting themselves without male support, short of being a common prostitute, apply them utterly without regard to the cultural context of the day or particular situations they were written to address, while simultaneously jettisoning everything else in the Bible said about women, mutual submission, mutual ownership of bodies within the marriage, there being neither male nor female in Christ–and speaking of Jesus, one would have to completely toss every single circumstance of His behavior towards women (e.g, invariably treating women with genuine respect rather than patronizing condescension, shockingly appearing first to women, not men, obeying His mother when, despite His protests, He nonetheless gave in to her desire that He should take care of the wine shortage at Cana).
But of course, what of it? Is throwing out what Jesus did anything new for them?

Law Prof’s take on Dustin Boles/Mosaic Church. Law Prof’s post on 9/14/16 has gotten high praise from Wartburgers.

“I know that tone: It’s the tone of a frat boy who just failed a midterm; unfortunately, it bears no resemblance to the tone of one who understands the magnitude of anything that’s been done and the inevitable aftermath for the victims of his abuse.
“Hey frat bros, hope you guys are well. My girlfriend Nat and I are fine, doing incredibly well! Oh yeah, sorry for my “epic fail” on that accounting midterm. Really drags down the overall fraternity GPA. My bad, bros. I know I really let you dudes down with my behavior. I don’t even understand why I do these stupid things and get kicked out of college for bad grades and all. I’m never goin back to the college again! But no excuses! Guess the ol’ accounting career is a bust now. HA! But hey dudes, at least I still have sales to fall back on–LOL!
But one thing, my dudebros, that cheat sheet you set me up with for the exam was a total downer, I mean it was for the wrong exam–and that really hurt me and Nat, you know. Total bummer.
But I really enjoyed my time with all of you in the frat house, the brewskys, the sorority girls, the good times. Hope to run into you somewhere out there–I’ll be the one trying to sell you life insurance or copiers or something–ROFLOL!
Peace, y’all.
Dustin “Party Animal” Boles”

Ken F wrote:
What is a good version of the EO Old Testament?
If you read Greek, you could get hold of a modern Greek bible from an Orthodox publishing house, or a Rahlf’s Septuagint, which is the go-to for serious Septuagint study among Protestants.
The NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) is a good, recent study edition; this is my go-to, since I don’t read Greek (yet). It is based on the NRSV and is the work of real scholars, a collaborative effort of Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox. I have this as a hard copy, but it can be read on line:http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/
I have a pocket edition NRSV that has all the books of the Apocrypha, including those extra 2 or 3 recognized by EO but not RC – handy for travel. Also the product of very good scholarship.
The Orthodox Church recognizes the old RSV as “approved for reading” – Oxford RSV with Apocrypha is available. This has the RSV study notes by Bruce Metzger et. al. if you’re used to that format. It’s not my favorite on the readability scale, but again it has the scholarship creds. Also, I don’t like that the Apocrypha follows the NT, as an addendum. In most other Bibles where it appears as an addendum, it’s usually placed between the Testaments. This is logical, because the writings stem from that time period.
When I want the best readability, I go to the old Jerusalem Bible from the early ’60s. (Did you know that the book of Jonah in the old JB was translated by JRR Tolkien? Yes, really!) Its notes reflect Catholic doctrine, but I don’t mind that. These are scarce as hen’s teeth, having been replaced by the New Jerusalem Bible, but perhaps you can find one in a nearby library, esp a university library.
The Orthodox Study Bible is based on the NKJV. It’s okay, but I don’t own one; the notes are not to my inclination. If I want to read Orthodox commentary on Scripture, I prefer to go back to the works of the pre-Schism Greek Fathers that are available in English.
There are several Catholic Bible editions around – RSV, New American Bible, others – again, likely available in your library.
No English translation is perfect, but since I am academically inclined, I trust any of the above listed translations because I recognize the names of scholars who worked on them. Those scholars are head and shoulders above anybody who worked on the ESV.

Christiane and I both recommend the documentary (40-minutes on Netflix) called the “White Helmets”. It is about the group of humanitarian men in Syria who rescue people from the bombings. Very moving. High sense of ethics. High value placed on human life. Rescues of small children.

One of the Christian books I have ever read is Darwin Chandler’s “The Royal Law of Liberty”. He goes through the entire Bible, particularly the New Testament, dealing a death blow to legalism. The axiom of the entire book is that any doctrine that causes oppression, misery or pain to any group is contrary to the goal of God’s “law of love your neighbour”. In light of this he encourages women to stand up for their liberty in Christ and walk out of churches that do not recognise their gifts. He also shows how the words of Jesus about divorce and remarriage in Matthew 19 was designed to protect women who were being dumped for someone better, and laments how the church has turned this into a legalistic and oppressive doctrine. Whilst he does not quote Piper directly, his teaching comes under fire. His views on the sex and marriage differs from the mainstream tradition but he follows the same axiom of “love your neighbour”. He also shows that sometimes the letter of the law can be set aside to follow the spirit of it – pointing to Jesus healing on the Sabbath and David eating the “holy bread” which was forbidden. This book can really change your Christian walk and challenge you to the core.

ZechZav UNITED KINGDOM on Sun Sep 25, 2016 at 03:53 PM said:
Ian wrote:
Ichthus is a new church grouping which I would say is Arminian and egalitarian. There may be some issues relating to the their charismatic theology, but again I’m not sure why you feel they should be avoided.
I forgot to reply on this previously. I was greatly blessed to read Roger Forster’s book God’s Strategy in Human History and also his book Women in the Kingdom. The former was a critique of Calvinist dogmas and the latter argued for women in leadership. I would highly recommend those books. My contention with them is not their charismatic theology in itself, but their promotion of the “Toronto Blessing” some 20 years ago. When I was subjected to heavy shepherding for questioning this, the leaders were very much influenced by Ichthus, New Frontiers (Terry Virgo) and Pioneer (Gerald Coates). They also led this thing called “March For Jesus” where they people to “claim the ground” and do “spiritual warfare” There is also something with them I just can’t put my finger on, so I personally avoid it.

Robin C UNITED STATES on Wed Sep 28, 2016 at 08:20 PM said:
@Christiane,
I am so glad you listened! There are a lot of Christian voices out there who don’t agree with the Neo Cals.
Christiane wrote:
Robin C wrote:
Check out the Thinking Fellows podcast. click on Eternal Subordination of the Son. Three Lutherans and Two Presbyterians discussed this recently.
ROBIN, thank you for this excellent reference. It gives some real insight into the thinking of people from diverse backgrounds in the Church. Great podcast!

From someone who recommended this book on Jory Micah (Christian pastor/blogger’s) Facebook page today:

Paul Harral I’ve posted this before, but it seems appropriate to do so again:

From the book Fundamentalism by Fisher Humphreys and Philip Wise, based on research by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby work in the multi-volume study The Fundamentalism Project (University of Chicago Press, 1991):

Fundamentalists share nine traits in common:

1. Religious based origination – all fundamentalist movements are grounded in religions and there are fundamentalist movements within many religions, including Protestantism.
2. Selective use of tradition – ignoring parts of their heritage that doesn’t fit their world view.
3. Reaction of the modern world – where there is no reaction against modernity, there is no fundamentalism.
4. Siege mentality – fundamentalists believe that their religious faith and way of life is under attack are under siege from aspects of modernity.
5. Militancy – fundamentalists react to modernity by fighting against it and demonizing their unbelieving enemies.
6. Authoritarian male leaders – such leaders are central in interpreting traditions and evaluating modernity,
7. Historical view – fundamentalists recall the past as better than a present that is bad and getting worse and look to a future time when their tradition will be victorious.
8. Definite boundaries – they distinguish carefully between true believes and others and draw clear lines between insiders and outsiders.
9. Totalitarian impulse – fundamentalists do not work toward coexistence; they are determined to replace modernity with their own religious system.

n his review of Kevin Gile’s book “The Trinity & Subordinationism”, Roger Nicole notes:
“To speak of subordination of the Son to the Father in the trinitarian relationship is to repeat the error of Arianism … Those who advocate the hierarchical-complementarian view of womanhood, as well as the supporters of the egalitarian-complementarian view, may well build a case with apparent support of some texts of Scripture, but the main current of Scripture favors the latter, while the former is, unconsciously perhaps, influenced by a dominant presupposition of the inferiority of women, derived from a social context rather than from the Bible … This is a tightly reasoned volume with a true mastery of relevant texts and a solid argument against any subordination in the Trinity and for the biblical egalitarian-complementary view of womanhood.”
It’s clear that Dr. Nicole didn’t think much of messing with the Trinity and the extension of ESS doctrine to subordinate women believers!

Velour wrote:
My grandmother died at 102 years old. I was raised with her telling us stories at the dinner table about what it was like for her to be in graduate school at university and NOT have the right to vote! She, her little old lady friends, and her women relatives helped get the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed. She always voted and told us to do same.
That was a hard-fought right.
Velour, if you have not seen it, I highly recommend ‘Iron Jawed Angels’ but it has some graphic scenes in it, one of forced feeding in a prison that is brutal to watch.

Here’s the Internet Archive link to Marjoe, a documentary about former evangelist Marjoe Gortner, who began his career as a small child. In my unasked-for opinion, it should be required viewing for every believer.

Here’s the Internet Archive link to Marjoe, a documentary about former evangelist Marjoe Gortner, who began his career as a small child. In my unasked-for opinion, it should be required viewing for every believer.https://archive.org/details/Marjoe.1972.Legendado#

That’s interesting. I’ve watched part of it and I will watch the rest of it later in the week.

Filed under the “Etc.” category. Nick-isms from our own Nick Bulbeck in Scotland.

“Nick Bulbeck UNITED KINGDOM on Tue Oct 25, 2016 at 04:32 AM said:
I have decided it’s time to introduce another acronym to TWW, to accompany:
 ION (In Other News) (i.e. “this comment is completely irrelevant”)
 IHTIH (I Hope This Is Helpful)
… as well as the important neologisms “Deebs” and “Wartburgers”.
Today’s new acronym reflects the fact that a few of us are on UTC+1 which is several hours ahead of the majority of Wartburgers. It is:
 GMFS
… and stands for Good Morning From Scotland.
BeakerJ (or “Beaks” as she is more properly known) may prefer GMFE. Anyway, without further ado:

Grainne UNITED STATES on Thu Nov 03, 2016 at 08:26 PM said:
@ Nancy2:
So true. Kevin Giles writes about the heresy of the eternal subordination of the Son as promulgated by Grudem and others in his books The Trinity and Subordinationism, and Jesus and the Father. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the co-eternal and co-equal Son, fully God and fully man, equal in authority and power with the Father. The desire to dominate which is clearly represented in the complementarian position diminish our Lord and are repugnant to me for this reason especially.

Barb Orlowski CANADA on Wed Dec 07, 2016 at 01:43 PM said:
We have just been enjoying the Knowledge Network series: The Ascent of Woman.
It is a historical look at the influence and impact of women in/on history. There are names and events that one has never heard about in a history class! It can be viewed on the internet. Enjoy!!
“In this acclaimed four-part documentary series, Dr. Amanda Foreman charts the changing role of women from the dawn of civilization to the modern day. Travelling around the world, the historian/biographer uncovers stories of extraordinary women who created their own routes to power, examines the uneven trajectory of women’s status in both the Eastern and Western worlds, and looks at the role of women in revolutions that have transformed the modern world, from political uprisings to reproductive rights.”https://www.knowledge.ca/program/ascent-woman

FREE stretching classes done by a local community college here in Silicon Valley, West Valley College. They have helped improve my flexibility.

Velour UNITED STATES on Mon Dec 26, 2016 at 07:18 AM said:
okrapod wrote:
About three months ago I injured my neck trying to cut down a holly tree (don’t ask) and I still cannot twist my neck adequately to drive, nor can I sit upright and immobile that long, which is what it would require.
I am so sorry to hear about your neck injury and pain.
If you are medically approved, here are some great Stretch & Flex videos done by a local community college here in Silicon Valley, West Valley College. The teacher, Joan, is pleasant, encouraging, and calm. There are 25 videos. Every video should be done at least 2 times, once in the morning and once at night. Or 2 days in a row.
The videos run about 30 minutes, with 20 minutes of stretching and a 10 minute relaxation period at the end. One of the students has a slight limitation and he has had to do the exercises differently to accommodate his disability.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzPISuhFvkY&list=PLvy0K4S9D5SxGMS-yS8zKH9KBRmfyTdbI
These videos really help with my flexibility and I took the online course.

The Man who Wasn’t Thursday UNITED STATES on Tue Dec 27, 2016 at 11:49 PM said:
The Man who Wasn’t Thursday wrote:
@ Lydia:
By the way, George MacDonald is the antidote to Calvinism (and C.S. Lewis by extension). They, plus Chesterton, pulled me irresistibly away from Reformed theology. Oh, yeah, and seeing people around me get destroyed. That has a way of leaving a bad aftertaste.
Wow. I realize the potential misunderstanding in what I wrote:”George Macdonald is the antidote to…(C.S. Lewis by extension).” It should have been, “George MacDonald (and C.S. Lewis by extension) are the antidote…”
C.S. Lewis was certainly not a Calvinist!

I’m usually a lurker, but I wanted to share an interesting link. I often think of insightful discussions and sharp posters here at tww when I listen to his lectures and interviews. His name is Jordan Peterson and he’s a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. Apparently he’s recently been in the news because he feels so strongly about free speech. Anyway, he talks a lot about archetypes in literature and ideologies. He has two lecture series that are really fascinating, Maps of Meaning and the other one is about personalities. He also discusses religion. I’ve come to conclude that he’s a Christian and I think what makes him so insightful is that he doesn’t speak “Christianese”. He’s supposed to debate Sam Harris later this month. I hope y’all enjoy it if y’all listen to him. It’s probably because of my plebe tier state school education, but sometimes I have to listen twice
to really understand. Oh well, what else am I gonna listen to when I’m washing those suds off my husband’s drinking glass?! 😉

Three Yancey books that helped me the most are:
1. Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud
2. Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church*
3. Where is God When it Hurts?

*I recommend “Soul Survivor” to every None, every Done, and everyone who wishes they were…

roebuck UNITED STATES on Sat Feb 04, 2017 at 05:10 PM said:
ishy wrote:
Ken F wrote:
The YRR’s have a funny relationship with the word “all.” It means “all” when it suits them, but it means “some” when it doesn’t. The charge of universalism is unfounded if we take the Bible as a whole. It’s possible to believe in unlimited atonement while also believing that that some people will reject Jesus’ sacrifice for themselves. That does not make God less sovereign.
I’ve always been a bit mystified by my Calvinista friends who are the first to shout they are more biblical than everyone else, and then then avoid verses like you mentioned like the plague. “That doesn’t count!” isn’t an argument for being biblical or logical.
Not so related, I’ve noticed something over the past few weeks. All the big Bible searches I’ve used for a long time have removed the KJV and NASB with Strong’s numbers, so you can’t look up the Greek text as you go. I know at least three of the big ones are associated with Bible translation publishers.

I use a free Bible program called ‘Xiphos’, which has the KJV with Strongs numbers and the Greek and Hebrew lexicons. Available for Windows and Linux at xiphos.org

Monica ROMANIA on Mon Feb 06, 2017 at 05:59 AM said:
I’m reading a really good book on prayer (A Praying Life, Paul E. Miller) and last night I ran into these two passages (there are some other paragraphs in between):
“Greek Stoics prided themselves on their ability to be unruffled by life; Socrates calmly took the cup of poison given him by his executioners. Neoplatonism seeped into the church, equating spirituality with a suppression of desire and emotion. That’s why Jesus comes across in so many films as a bit strange and effeminate. He walks slowly, talks slowly, and moves slowly. You want to put a pin in him.
“Jesus could not be more different. Read the Gospels and you’ll discover a passionate, feeling man. Thank God we have a Savior who is in touch with the real world, who prays that he will not drink the cup of his Father’s wrath, who cries out on a rough wooden cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’ (Matthew 27:46). Jesus neither suppresses his feelings nor lets them master him. He is real.”

Jerome UNITED STATES on Wed Feb 08, 2017 at 05:21 PM said:
Jonathan Merritt of Religion News Service interviews Carol Howard Merritt, author of “Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting With a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church”:http://gazette.com/hurt-by-the-church-its-time-to-talk-about-it/article/1596255
“RNS: Are there particular kinds of churches that seem to inflict harm disproportionately?
CHM: Yes, there are certain churches that can be more complicit in abuse. Religion has the capacity to inspire us to be peaceful, loving, and fully human in the best sense, or it can make us controlling, violent, and cruel. We can learn a lot about how a church inflicts harm by listening for the ways that they describe God. People reflect the God they worship. So if people focus on an angry God, then they become angry people. On the other hand, if people worship a loving God, then they can be inspired to move about in the world as a beloved community.”
“RNS: What about ‘new Calvinism?’ I know people who feel these types of churches inflict a disproportionate amount of pain. What do you think?
CHM: I’m a Calvinist and a pastor in the largest Presbyterian denomination, with the deepest historic roots. I study and teach alongside feminist theologians and biblical scholars. We read Calvin with a generous lens, as people who are reformed and still reforming.
I don’t have a lot of experience with new Calvinism. I was confused when people disparaged Calvinists as ultra-conservative, or writers who talk about Calvinists as something completely different from the largest and most historic streams of thought. The main exposure I have to new Calvinism are the avatars who attack me and other women writers regularly online. I physically wince when I think about them, like a dog who has been hit by her owner. So if we’re judging social media interactions, it seems new Calvinism stands in the forefront of Christians who inflict pain.”

Ian UNITED KINGDOM on Wed Mar 01, 2017 at 09:45 AM said:
Velour wrote:
Ian wrote:
It’s not well-known that, around 1983, John MacArthur fired a number of married ladies who were working as secretaries. He said the Bible teaches that husbands are to be the sole breadwinner.
I did not know that. It figures.
It is stated in a book called “No Time For Silence – Evangelical Women in Public Ministry Around the Turn of the Century” by Janette Hassey, page 146-147 in my copy. The book was published in 1986 and I’m sure JMac would have made a fuss if it wasn’t true.
It’s an interesting book – it shows how women had quite a prominent role in evangelicalism in the years around 1900. Few people know about this, especially as it doesn’t do complementarianism any favours. It’s very useful for when dealing with claims that the desire for gender equality in the church is a product of women’s lib in the 1960s. Recommended if you are interested in the subject.

Here is psychologist/author/Undue Influence expert Steve Hassan’s website about
how high control groups/Thought Reform groups work to exert Undue Influence over
people. It is the BITE Model. That stands for Behavior Control, Information Control,
Thought Control, and Emotional Control. (It is based on the work of Hassan’s mentor,
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, former Air Force psychiatrist now at Yale University, who
studied the Chinese Communists and their control of people.)https://freedomofmind.com/bite-model/

Arlene on Tue Mar 07, 2017 at 10:43 AM said:
I hope this isn’t too off-topic, but I’ve been reading “Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape”, by the niece of the current president, and wondering if Scientology has ever been investigated for child abuse or educational neglect. It certainly wasn’t normal the way she was raised – apart from her parents, only allowed contact a few hours a week (later not for years), hours of manual labor, hours of Scientology instruction, insufficient regular education, kept busy all day long with responsibilities far beyond her age (giving medical checks of kids and doling out vitamins at 7!) And why do former Scientologists always say they “escaped” as opposed to just leaving?
(https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-Secret-Scientology-Harrowing-ebook/dp/B008XOJ7C2/)

JYJames UNITED STATES on Mon Apr 03, 2017 at 04:08 PM said:
@ Talmidah:
Thanks so much, Talmidah. I must say, the story of James McBride’s mom in “The Color of Water” really spoke to our family. His mom is a goddess.

Christiane on Tue Apr 04, 2017 at 07:42 AM said:
@ Velour:
By the way, in December of this year, Dr. Emily Hunter McGowin’s PhD dissertation is going to be fully publised by Dayton University with her permission ….. it concerns quiverfull families and I am looking forward to reading it when it is printed/published. Some people here may remember Emily as someone who used to comment on Wade’s blog and has an interest in women’s issues. She is a former Southern Baptist and is now Anglican/Episcopalian. Her husband is now an Anglican/Episcopalian priest.

Geoff S. UNITED STATES on Wed Apr 05, 2017 at 01:26 PM said:
@ Deb:
To anyone affiliated with TWW who, in response to the comment that I posted yesterday, would like to know why Calvinism and Reformed are not synonyms (strictly-speaking, popular usage notwithstanding), let me offer an introductory answer.
“Calvinism,” at its core, stands for God’s sovereignty in election, representing as it does the so-called Five Points of Calvinism. Calvinism is easily transferable from one type of church to another. There are plenty of Calvinistic Baptists and some Calvinistic Methodists. It is also transferable to para-church/incorporated entities like Desiring God or Grace to You or TGC or Together for the Gospel or Nine Marks or whatever, i.e., to entities that are not churches and not the church.
So Calvinism is about how God sovereignly saves His elect by applying Christ’s redemptive work to them through His Holy Spirit. This is not an exhaustive definition, but it is a working one.
It hardly begins to represent John Calvin’s thinking and theology. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is a big, thick book that covers Christian life, faith, and worship in such a comprehensive way that it remains a classic text for Reformed churches throughout the world. To be sure, Calvin clearly held to at least four of his own Five Points, but that represents a fraction of his theological legacy.
Reformed Christianity is that branch of the Reformation that took hold in Switzerland–associated closely with Zurich and Geneva–and made its way to Holland (the Dutch Reformed) and to England and Scotland (Presbyterianism). It also found a home in Germany. The Reformed faith came to America with the immigrants from these countries and continued on here, sometimes in more exclusively ethnic communions (Dutch and German), sometimes in fewer ethnic communions (Presbyterians and Congregationalists).
Reformed Christianity is a Word and Sacrament faith based firmly in the church. It is almost by definition suspicious of anything para-church, where individuals with charismatic personalities derive their authority from their popularity and not from the church’s (often multi-tiered) government. Reformed Christianity embraces worship forms that are regulated by Holy Scripture. Reformed Christianity defines itself by its outstanding creeds and catechisms. And Reformed Christianity is redemptive-historical–i.e., it reads the Scripture as the outworking of God’s singular redemptive plan in history, which is recorded for us in the Old and New Testaments.
A personal word: the covenant theology contained that is the hallmark of the Reformed faith’s British branch is its theological crown jewel. I do not recall ever hearing a word about it from the Calvinistas. In my mind, a Calvinist without covenant theology is … just another Calvinist; he (and it is almost invariably a he!) is not Reformed.
One additional point: Definitions include what a thing is and what a thing is not. I am currently doing an SS series called Evangelicalism’s 10 Harmful Tendencies. I’ve used TWW for some of my research. Calvinists are often right at home in evangelicalism, while Reformed (and probably the conservative Lutheran churches) are not so at home. So, Reformed Christianity resists evangelical tendencies that put personalities above the church, that exalt individualism over the community, that encourage feelings over facts, and make pragmatism their guiding rule for ministry. And, as one Reformed acquaintance put it, when he was comparing New Calvinism to Old Calvinism (i.e., the Reformed faith): “The New Calvinism uses words like robust, vibrant, embrace and lots of adverbs.
Old Calvinists don’t.”
I hope this helps!

Geoff S. UNITED STATES on Wed Apr 05, 2017 at 02:52 PM said:
@ Deb:
You’re welcome!
I think there are some important take-aways from maintaining the distinction–at least for TWW readers, who may not agree with the Reformed faith. They are: the Calvinism in its neo-Cal and YRR forms is really, in my mind, just another American evangelical trend. It may be more serious theologically than, say, Jesus People or Promise Keepers, but it’s trendy nonetheless. It’s got traction, some momentum, it’s novel. Evangelicals love novel–it’s often the fuel that keeps them moving forward. The Reformed faith, with its Word and Sacraments beliefs, is slow and steady. It should be patient and modest–more interested in faithfulness than popularity.
This helps to explain why Calvinism shows up in non-profits led by charismatic figures and/or new churches doing things new ways–especially for young people. They are personality-based and personality-driven. Nine Marks is a para-church group–how absurd is that? TGC has a truncated, common denominator gospel that only barely resembles Paul’s. But their spiritual center is the conference, the blog, the books, the conference, the live feed. It has to be, because ordinary ministers serving in ordinary ways are not very exciting.
I’m Reformed, but I read TWW because the things that you are wary of are the things that I am wary of, even if for slightly different reasons. In short: charismatic individuals who base their authority on their popularity, are above the church and its jurisdiction (Tulian?), need money to operate, and inevitably make themselves into the story may be Calvinists, but they are not Reformed. Jonathan Edwards, who is Piper’s hero, was a local church minister and a missionary to the Native Americans on the frontier. He did not start The Excellencies of Christ ministries, slap his picture all over it, and ask for money. If John Piper announced that his work here is done, that he can write books in Pakistan as well as he can here, and that he intends to serve the Christians in the Muslim world for the remainder of his life, then I might just dig his books out of the trash and pay some attention to him again. Piper is a Christian Hedonist all right.

Maybe individual christians reject it (or modify it or make peace with it in some other way) but for me it’s always been the elephant in the room.

You are correct Jack. It is one of many difficult things in the Old Testament. Take, for example, the utter destruction of certain people groups-including their children, horses, etc.

Years ago, I went through a crisis of faith of sorts. I then started to explore the *hard stuff* in the Bible. I bet you expect me to say that I found all the answers. I didn’t and I haven’t. But I did find some.

For me, I found it helpful to realize that I was not the first to read such difficult stories and find them hard to take. Yet, many like me still found that the Bible best described the world that I see around me. I well recognize my shortcomings as well as my guilt. That guilt finds forgiveness in the person of Jesus

There have been many people who have taken on the elephants (there are many) in the room. They do not deny it as they struggle with it yet they still believe. Are they deceived. I don’t think so.

There is a decent book (no-it doesn’t have all the answers) but it deals wth some of this. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

Christiane on Tue Apr 18, 2017 at 10:20 PM said:
brian wrote:
somethings just don’t balance this side of eternity, if that makes any sense
‘yes’,
and ‘no’
it depends on how we perceive the imbalance and I think our perspective is key to being at peace with this mystery
I found the film ‘The Tree of Life’ (Terrance Malik) to be helpful in how it handled some of the most wrenching of questions we all eventually must deal withhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrAz1YLh8nY
“The nuns taught us there were two ways through life—the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow…
Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries
Nature only wants to please itself….. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things… The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.” (Terrence Malik)
When I come to the end of understanding, there are two prayers I am able to hold on to:
“Holy Lord, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us”
and
“Jesus, I trust in You”

Christiane on Thu Apr 27, 2017 at 08:42 PM said:
Velour wrote:
My friends are smart, well-educated, kind, decent people. They are doctors, nurses, dentists, dermatologists, lawyers, college professors, and writers.
I defend them because they are lovely people.
There’s a great series on Netflix about people from Turkey that gives some insight into just how ‘normal’ and human people from the old Ottoman Empire are portrayed. It’s called 1001 Nights. I saw this series and thought, ‘my goodness, if our dear American people who have no clue about the people of Islamic heritage, this series might open a few eyes. I loved the character portrayals. It does confront some of the same issues we struggle with concerning the place of women in our own ‘western’ culture, and I found that revealing also.
Problem in our country is how little contact people have with those from the Islamic nations. You have been fortunate, as I have, in meeting and knowing some very fine people who are Muslims. Unfortunately, there is big money in certain circles to foster Islamophobia in our own country in both political and also some religious circles ….. It is notable that our Jewish friends do NOT support Islamophobia …. Sadly, I think we know why they have such a hatred for discrimination based on ethnic, racial, or religious prejudice. They know how the story ends.

Christiane on Sat Apr 29, 2017 at 11:07 PM said:
Good reads: If anyone is interested in stories about God’s mercy and grace, I think they might find this new book meaningful (maybe):
‘Hallelujah Anyway’ by Anne Lamott
here is a quote taken from it:
“I wasn’t seeking a church or Jesus — just respite from my disease (alcoholism) and mental problems. There were about 50 people at the church, half black, half white, all liberal civil rights and Vietnam activists people. Way more women than men, lots of old black women from the South, via the Great Migration. And they didn’t hassle me, or threaten me with home visits, or make me take classes, so I could figure out who shot the Holy Ghost.
They just let me be, and fed me, and loved me. I was very slowly restored by the love of gentle do-gooders, and a year later, in 1986, I got sober, and eventually got baptized.”
would be nice if we could ‘let people be and just feed them and love them’ when they need ‘respite’ from the world …… kind of sounds like when people go to retreats at monasteries where it’s quiet and peaceful, with plain healthy food and people who will listen if they care to talk
I guess God helped Annie find such a place, maybe not a ‘real’ monastery, but no matter ….. same peace, same calming care ….. providence? yes, I think it was

JYJames UNITED STATES on Mon Apr 03, 2017 at 04:08 PM said:
@ Talmidah:
Thanks so much, Talmidah. I must say, the story of James McBride’s mom in “The Color of Water” really spoke to our family. His mom is a goddess.

Velour,

I just finished reading this biography upon your recommendation. What a splendid and inspiring read… thank you!

Ken F UNITED STATES on Mon May 22, 2017 at 09:17 PM said:
Catholic Gate-Crasher wrote:
How do you get around Matthew 25: 31-46? It can’t simply be dismissed as a shopworn debate. It. Is. In. The. Bible. In fact, it is a lengthy and prominent Biblical passage. It *demands* a response. How does one get around it?
Brad Jersak is an author/teacher I recently came across. He was Calvinist but is now Eastern Orthodox. This article does not address Matthew 25, but it raises some very good questions that get to the heart of your question: http://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2011/05/bradj-jersak-who-you-callin-a-universalist.html.

Ken F UNITED STATES on Tue May 23, 2017 at 08:16 PM said:
Should women teach men? Well, here is something I learned very recently. Gregory of Nyssa was a very important theologian who helped finalize the Nicene Creed at the Second Council of Nicea. He praised his sister Macrina as a great teacher. See https://www.andrews.edu/library/car/cardigital/Periodicals/AUSS/1979-1/1979-1-07.pdf
Macrina was an exemplary teacher of the Word, respected by men and women, and by lay people and clergy alike. While as one would expect in a fourth-century work written by an orthodox bishop, Macrina exercises no sacramental function, but no one questions that she must be accepted as an authoritative guide in the philosophic life. So authoritative is she as a teacher that Gregory the bishop portrays himself as an admirer of, and learner from, this woman who was the “common boast of our family.” In his last conversations with her in the Life, Gregory appears as the one who is in need of comfort and instruction, and these he receives from Macrina. Within this context, note should be made that Macrina is explicitly a teacher of the Word; that is, Gregory presents her as an expert in expounding Scripture.
So the next time you recite the Nicene creed, think about Macrina’s contribution.

Jim Gifford UNITED STATES on Sun May 28, 2017 at 01:28 PM said:
Ken F wrote:
The word to look up is apokatastasis.
Beware the doctrine of apokatastasis. Its “origin” is Origen of Alexandria. The roots of the apokatastasis are the same as those of what we call Calvinism, which is the identification of the simplicity of the Platonic One with that of God the Father. The Platonic One was utterly simple and without any kind of differentiation. That means what the One does is identical to what the One is. When Origen used such a definition of God in his “On First Principles,” the immediate corollary is the blurring of the distinction between the generation of the Son and the creation of the world (Arianism comess from this, as does ESS). Origen therefore needed the apokatastasis to allow all of wayward creation to “return” to the Father, since they were all “one” in a very real way.
Calvinism, and its older incarnation, Augustinian determinism, is an offshoot of the same idea. In Calvinism, especially the variety espoused by Jonathan Edwards, the created world is nothing more than an extension of the mind (Edwards) or the will (Calvin) of God. Therefore the world and God are “one” in the same way as Origen and his disciple Augustine envisioned.
The 5th ecumenical council (Constantinople II) condemned the doctrine of apokatastasis in the mid-6th century. Both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism recognize this council. Don’t reject the poisoned apples for the poisoned pears.
Jim G.

Darlene UNITED STATES on Thu Jun 01, 2017 at 03:24 PM said:
Velour wrote:
Darlene wrote:
@ Velour:
Velour, do you have a link to that blog from the woman who was mistreated at a Neo-Calvinist Calvinist church? She wrote an article not long ago that living with her abusive husband was like being given the matches to burn down her home.
Darlene,
I was thinking of Natalie K.,https://emotionalabusesurvivor.com/
Is that who you are thinking of?
Yes, that’s the lady I was thinking of. Thank you for the link! She is a treasure trove of wisdom!

ishy UNITED STATES on Thu Jun 01, 2017 at 04:02 PM said:
okrapod wrote:
@ Lea:
Yes. I never heard it said seriously. But then, this resurgence of talk about both slavery and the civil war is more discussion of either than I heard for decades before this. I don’t know how this all got started, but it is odd that now this all comes up again.
I am suddenly reminded of a few things I have read by both Piper and Bruce Ware, emphasizing the “man’s place” returning to an earthly kingdom. And in a kingdom, everyone is really a slave to the King.
John Piper writes: “God has revealed himself to us in the Bible pervasively as King, not Queen, and as Father, not Mother. The second person of the Trinity is revealed as the eternal Son. The Father and the Son created man and woman in his image, and gave them together the name of the man, Adam (Genesis 5:2). God appoints all the priests in Israel to be men. The Son of God comes into the world as a man, not a woman. He chooses twelve men to be his apostles. The apostles tell the churches that all the overseers—the pastor/elders who teach and have authority should be men.”
Bruce Ware writes “What we see, then, is this: Because the Father is the eternal Father of the eternal Son, the Father always acts in ways that befit who he distinctively is as Father such that, among other things, he eternally possesses and expresses Fatherly authority; the Son as the eternal Son of the eternal Father correspondingly always acts in ways that befit who he distinctively is as Son such that, among other things, he eternally possesses and expresses a submission to act gladly and freely as Agent of the Father. The Bible’s discussion of the roles and functions of the Trinitarian persons points to this repeatedly. The Father sends and the Son goes. The Father plans and the Son executes the plan of the Father. The Father designs and the Son implements the design of the Father. One never finds the reverse. One never sees the Son commanding and the Father obeying, the Son sending and the Father going. There is a stubborn irreversibility in the outworking of the Trinitarian roles, along with other clear, unambiguous teaching that the Son is fully equal to and one with the Father.”
I think Piper is dead wrong here. I think earthly kings were exactly opposite of how Jesus wanted to represent Himself. God is better than our idea of a King, and I don’t think He wants us to think of Him that way and Jesus makes that clear to the disciples over and over again. He’s God, not emperor or king.
And Ware set up ESS theology and then compares men to this absolute king. Aside from the way it treats women, no one in TGC talks about where this puts men once you go deeper than that point. There’s only one king, but they all want to set themselves up as kings with everyone as their slaves. Nearly all of the New Calvinist leaders appointed themselves or their friends. They assigned themselves authority over others. It’s something straight out of a fantasy novel (apologies to GRR Martin).

Burwell UNITED STATES on Wed Jun 07, 2017 at 02:08 PM said:
To the Deebs et al,
Thank you for this post, which, at least in my own life, is timely. Yesterday I attended EEO/ADA/Diversity training for HR Managers and was introduced to “The Danger of a Single Story” via a TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie. Without going into too much detail, the 9Marks “Wormwood” piece, as well as Davis’ own blog and the TGC/Southern Seminary account are examples of “single stories” which are attempting to influence, if not outright co-opt, the overall and quite complex narrative of what happened at FBC Durham. Once again, the Deebs have been able to get just a few of the other narratives out there, and the truth is all the richer for it.
For those who are interested in such things, here is the link to Adichie’s TED Talk. She delivered it at Oxford in 2007 and it lasts about 7 or so minutes.https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg